Daniel Carmel-Brown, Chief Executive at Jewish Care, discusses the ongoing challenges facing the social care sector, including disproportionate financial burdens and government inaction. He calls for urgent reform and collaboration to ensure a sustainable future for providers and those they support.
Having worked in social care for 30 years, I’ve been disappointed by successive governments’ failure to reform social care, and we continue to wait for a plan on this. However, these latest decisions in the Budget, are in our view unjust, and actively harm the sector.
We are working alongside Care England, the National Care Forum and communal organisations to communicate a strong message to the Government. As frontline providers, and as a charity, we have made representations and have written to Ministers, MPs and to the Treasury to make our views heard.
As the largest employer of health and social care services in the Jewish community, we have a workforce of 1,300 dedicated staff, who deliver frontline care and vital services. The 1.2% rise in employers’ NI will increase our wage bill by £400,000. We had planned for this but the additional lowering of the threshold to £5,000 adds another £700,000.
Organisations like ours, with a high proportion of part-time frontline staff, are disproportionately impacted. The changes will cost Jewish Care an additional £1.1 million annually. Unlike commercial businesses, the majority of our residents are funded by local authorities, which themselves remain financially stretched. We are also all concerned that Budget allocations for social care will not reach frontline providers like us due to the fragility of local authority funding positions more broadly. In addition, we receive no government funding for our community-based work, including that of Jami, our mental health service, our social workers, and our community and dementia day centres.
We are all seeing an increase in the need for the provision of care for older people, those living with dementia, or who are at the end of life, and a rise in the number of people living with mental illness, distress or trauma, who Jewish Care supports through Jami’s mental health service for the community, or one of our homes for people living with mental health issues. We urgently need to see cross-party political agreement on the social care crisis and to find a way forward to address this.
Whilst we understand the huge demands on Government to address NHS challenges, doing so without resolving the growing crisis in social care and expecting care providers and not-for-profit organisations to bear the cost, whilst exempting the NHS and public bodies from the National Insurance (NI) increases, is unsustainable and has serious repercussions.
Jewish Care is proud to already align with the London Living Wage, a commitment that adds £2 million annually to our costs, enabling us to attract and retain the best talent. We have also halved staff turnover rates compared to the sector average. We are working hard to manage costs. Last year, we made huge cost savings by reducing reliance on agency staff, at the same time, increasing continuity and quality of care we provide. We continue to find innovative solutions to ensure financial sustainability for the organisation. This year, we must rely on the community to raise £20 million to sustain our current services and avoid difficult decisions. We hope that with their continued support, we will rise to the challenges ahead.
I have been moved to have been contacted by many of our supporters, asking how these changes will affect us. I am grateful that we have heard concern for care providers and charities like ours, who are facing difficulty. I believe, that together with colleagues across the care sector we are stronger together in representing the voice of social care to decision-makers. I hope that by continuing the conversation, we will eventually see a Government which is prepared to take on this thorny issue, so that we can look forward to a brighter future for those we care for, and for those who work in social care.
@jewish_care
Jewishcare.org
