First and foremost, it is crucial to recognise care workers as professionals. They are not mere tools to deliver care; they are individuals who have chosen this path out of a genuine desire to make a positive impact on the lives of those they support. Their dedication is admirable, but it does not render them immune to the challenges that confront them daily. One of these issues is being abused at work.
This isn’t an area of social care that gets media attention or a lot of research funding but a few pieces worth reading came out in the last couple of years that really show that we should be seriously thinking about care worker safety, preventing abuse and how incidents are dealt with.
A recent TUC report ‘A Strategy for the Care Workforce’ (2023) underscores the importance of this recognition. It advocates for staffing levels based on care and education needs rather than arbitrary ratios, and emphasises the necessity of collaborating with unions to define safe staffing standards. Additionally, it calls for access to safe and appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE), workplace stress risk assessments, and a zero-tolerance approach to workplace abuse and harassment
Then we have, a study conducted by Florence this year, among nearly 500 nurses and social care workers starkly illuminates the abuse care workers face:
A staggering 46% reported enduring both physical and verbal abuse in their workplaces.
The pandemic has exacerbated the issue, with 35% noting a considerable increase in abuse levels since its onset.
Disturbingly, 42% of respondents have experienced racist abuse, and 7% have been subjected to sexist abuse within their workplace.
These statistics are not mere numbers; they represent the untold stories of care workers who bear the brunt of mistreatment while striving to provide the best care possible.
Finally, the ‘Abuse and Wellbeing of Long-Term Care Workers in the COVID-19 Era’ study conducted by Saloniki et al. published in 2022 sheds light on the severity of abuse during the pandemic:
Shockingly, a quarter of care workers reported experiencing some form of abuse, with verbal abuse and bullying being the most prevalent.
Perpetrators of abuse varied by type, with people who draw on social care and their families primarily responsible for verbal abuse.
Reporting abuse was challenging, with some care settings lacking safe channels for reporting and in other cases, management failing to take action despite being informed.
The abuse of care workers is a crisis that we all need to pay much closer attention to. We spend a huge amount of time discussing and addressing recruitment issues but it seems that yet again it’s retention that should be getting more attention. These professionals, who dedicate their lives to supporting others, must be recognized, protected, and respected as individuals with their own rights. Their well-being is intrinsically tied to the quality of care they provide, and the abuse they endure affects not only them but also the people they support and families who depend on their dedicated service.
It is not enough to applaud care workers; we must actively support and protect them. Their rights, their well-being, and their dignity must be upheld. While we are very good at training care workers at safeguarding those they support and very quick at punishing any shortcomings or mistakes they make it seems that we have a lot of work to do in terms of policy and mindset of protecting care workers themselves. We can continue to accept that it is ‘part of the job’ and keep telling care workers to just carry on.
Does your training include teaching care workers about their rights? Do you have robust policies and procedures in place for protecting care workers against abuse that they experience themselves? Do your team members feel like they can report to you that they are being abused?
Think, evaluate and remember that care workers have a right to not be abused the same way everybody else does.
