With 165,000 social care jobs vacant, we desperately need recruiters to work in the sector to tackle the crisis
Ambulances are now queuing up outside the hospital with people waiting for them because there are not enough beds to discharge patients. This is partly another manifestation of our chronic social care crisis.Have 13,000 inpatients Ready to leave but unable to do so due to lack of social care.To help tackle the NHS crisis, we need to increase social care services, which we have already clarify how: By paying caregivers more and providing them with appropriate career paths and better conditions.
The government has provided £200m to provide short-term care placements so people can be discharged from hospital, but this does not address the huge underlying problem of undersupply of social care.their plans will only increase Available beds 2,000 When our needs are greater. If we don’t increase the capacity of the social care system to care for more people, thousands of people will remain in hospital beds, hurting everyone.
The reason these people can’t be discharged is that there simply aren’t enough nursing staff to take care of them. about 165,000 nursing jobs current vacancies – accounting for about one in 10 nursing jobs – among other things, About 30% of employees leave each year. We need to recruit and retain more nursing staff than we currently have.
But we can’t get more caregivers without paying more caregivers.Nursing jobs are among the lowest paid occupations in the country, with pay falling relative to other occupations low paying job. Nursing jobs now pay less than retail jobs. Conditions in the sector are also poor. The work itself is physically and emotionally demanding and insecure contracts are common, 25% of workers Zero Hour Contract. The prospects of the nursing profession are simply not good enough to attract the required number of nursing staff.
On top of that, paramedics don’t enter careers where there are opportunities for advancement and salary increases.experienced caregiver Earn a bit more than a novice. With few opportunities for accredited training, caregivers also have few avenues to upskill and earn higher wages in exchange for more skills.
We need to urgently reform our social care sector by expanding the quantity and quality of care available if we hope to have enough beds for our loved ones and the NHS for us when we need them. We’ve laid out a pathway to get there: Immediately raising care workers’ wages to a living wage and easing visa fees to allow more immigrants to work in the industry.
We’re also calling for longer-term reforms to ensure we have the right workforce of caregivers to meet our needs. We need to make nursing work a more attractive career by ensuring that there is a nursing career path in place that trades better conditions and more training for higher salaries.
We cannot solve the NHS crisis without improving the quality and quantity of nursing staff. Now is the time for the government to seize this opportunity to deliver the reforms we desperately need.
Image: iStock/Dean Mitchell
