Fitting into the UK’s nursing workforce

Co-published with Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.

The social care system in the UK does not provide the care people need. More than 1.8 million people have unmet care needs, a quarter are unable to undertake basic tasks such as laundry, and 8.8 million people, mainly women, provide unpaid care. The main reason for unmet care needs is the lack of trained nursing staff.

Nurses face three key challenges that must be addressed:

1. low salary. Paramedic wages have fallen relative to other low-wage occupations, leading to a recruitment and retention crisis
2. poor condition. Stressful working conditions, as well as job insecurity, also make it more difficult to recruit or retain caregivers.
3. Lack of training and formal qualificationsSecond. Additional experience is rarely recognized, and there is no path to higher salary through training.

Investing in our caregivers will address unmet care needs. It will also bring other chain economic, environmental and equity benefits. Improving wages and working conditions in this low-income sector will lead to higher wages and employment, especially in poorer areas. Nursing jobs are also green jobs, meaning they emit less carbon than other forms of work. With women performing the majority of paid and unpaid care work, expanding and improving the paid care workforce will also help reduce gender inequality.

We call for the following policies to build a nursing workforce fit for the UK.These policies should be implemented progressively as part of a realistic roadmap to building an appropriate nursing workforce in the UK, building on our recommendations Quality Care for All Paper.

short term

1. Increase the cost of care to a real living wage. This will help improve recruitment and retention in the sector
2. Expand access for international migrants within existing immigration policies. Waiver of visa fees will help increase the number of workers entering the country on health and care work visas
3. Register for National Assessment Standards. This should be checked as part of the new centralized standardized nursing certificate program and flexible enough to recognize equivalent experience.

mid term

1. Funds that meet the eligibility criteria of the Nursing Act. There are too few nursing staff to meet the needs mandated by legislation.Higher pay will lead to more nursing sector recruitment and retention
2. Create a social partnership board centered on sectoral negotiations to negotiate a long-term workforce strategy that includes training, promotion and conditions. Nursing staff should engage in collective departmental bargaining to develop common standards across the department in terms of training, promotion, pay and conditions.
3. Adopt a social license approach to commissioning and procurement. Local authorities should use a stronger set of regulations and standards when delegating care.

long

1. Expand eligibility criteria to meet modest needs. Extend care services to people who qualify under one of the Nursing Acts qualified result
2. With improved training, put nursing on the path to paying 75% of nurses’ salaries. Wages should rise commensurately with the training and productivity of caregivers.

A fully funded care system of this size doesn’t come cheap – ending up paying 75% of nurses’ salaries and more training costs £50bn a year more than we currently spend on nursing. This would be in line with spending on care in the Nordic countries. In short, this is the real cost of a well-funded care system.

Photo: iStock