Some people in the care profession are unaware how social care is funded and correctly point out they are not employed by the Government, so can’t see where the Government involvement is. So, no care workers are not employed by the Government, but their employer has to receive the money to pay them from somewhere and that is from the respective Local Authorities, who are funded themselves by the Government. Hence the increase in the National Insurance from April 2022, however, most of the NI money received will be going to the NHS with only a pittance, if any to social care.
All local authorities have, since 2010 had their funding substantially reduced due to the Government austerity cuts and then 2 years of increased costs due to COVID.
Social care has always been significantly underfunded, mainly due to all previous governments refusing to fund social care substantially.
£10.50 per hour would be a significant increase as many care worker are only on the National Living Wage of £9.50 or maybe the real Living Wage of £9.90 per hour.
But, when workers can earn around £14 per hour at supermarkets even £10.10 is no real incentive, especially when all the responsibilities of caring are taken into account.
But salary is but one aspect others will be, not recognising Bank Holidays, travel allowances, no sick pay and many others.
Caring is a very responsible occupation if done correctly, which, unfortunately is not always so.
The other problem is that many just believe that care workers only look after the elderly in care homes, which is also not correct, as many children and other adults receive social care within home care, supported living, hospices, respite services and others.
The lack of substantial funding by the Government and the restrictive immigration policies they introduced have contributed to the insufficiency in the quantity of persons coming into the caring profession, which is also a factor affecting the quality of care.
This Government needs to do very much more to alleviate the problems in social care, before social care completely disintegrates. The worse social care gets it will heap many more problems on the NHS causing even more funding to be required, so this Governments needs to look after social care and not just ignore it.
Safeguarding in care is of prime importance, as it is in all areas of life and the lack of social care, irrespective of the reasons leads to increases in safeguarding concerns. When this occurs care workers and the local authorities are blamed. While they need to be, no one should forget the responsibilities of the Government, for they are just as to blame for safeguarding concerns due to their complete lack of commitment to social care.
This government and all previous governments have to be held accountable for the current state of Social Care in England.
Source: Government must fund £10.50 social care minimum wage, urge migration advisers – Community Care
Carer Voice 