Professor Martin Green OBE is an Expert Advisory Council member for P&G Professional and the Chief Executive of Care England.
The vast majority of the economy has moved on from Covid, but for the care sector, this is still a major challenge. As the rest of the economy has opened up and there is nearly full employment, care homes have struggled to get enough of the right quality of staff to meet demand and maintain the quality of care.
A recent survey showed that 43% of care providers are closing to new admissions and 60% of home care providers are having to refuse requests for service because of staff shortages. This is not only having an enormous impact on the care sector but the knock-on effects are being seen in the NHS.
In the rest of the economy, this labour shortage is being responded to by increases in wages. Sadly because of how social care is commissioned, the idea of passing on these increases in staff costs to the customer is not possible. Local authorities do not have the money to pay increased fees, which means the care providers cannot compete for staff with the rest of the local economy.
The challenges around staffing are compounded by a range of other significant cost increases affecting the sector. It is not well realised that many of the restrictions imposed during the first phases of the Covid pandemic may have been removed for the rest of society but are still in place for the care sector.
One of the challenges is that staff have to ensure that they wear masks and comply with a range of other requirements and particularly are not allowed to work if they have tested positive for Covid. The complexity of social care work, added to these additional restrictions, is also acting as an impediment to recruiting and retaining our staff and adding extra cost.
In recent months we have also seen the costs of insurance rise by several hundred per cent. Of course, the energy price rises that have been hitting everybody over the last few weeks are disproportionately affecting the care sector. Care is a very energy-intensive sector; I have seen some providers whose energy costs have risen by up to 630%. This means that increasingly it is difficult to make care sustainable.
While the government has now announced a six-month price cap for all UK businesses, a welcome measure over the winter that will see bills halved in comparison to predicted levels, the reality is that this is still drastically higher than last year – and a six month support package leaves care providers uncertain of the future and unable to plan for the long-term.
These challenges affect the entire sector, but the impact on small providers is particularly concerning. Many small providers are telling me they are on the cusp of viability at the moment, and any further increases in utilities or staffing costs will mean the services will have to close. The impact this will have on the people who use care services and those who are in residential care will be enormous.
It is my view that this creates such a risk that the government must do something to help care providers to navigate these vast increases in cost. The loss of any care service will of course greatly impact those who use them.
We are going to have to have a much more strategic approach to how we fund and staff care services in the future because the demographics of the UK mean there will be more people who need care. We have to have a system that is sustainable and able to respond to that need.
The staff shortages are not only being felt in the roles directly involved in care, but they are also being felt in a range of support and axillary posts, which are vital to the delivery of safe, effective, high-quality care. The global Covid pandemic highlighted the importance of cleaning teams and how care homes must ensure that their environment is as germ-free and hygienic as possible.
The pressures on care services are enormous, so we must use staff as effectively as possible. Regarding cleaning and infection control teams, not only do we have to have the right staff, but we also have to ensure the right products can deliver the right outcome. Care services are fortunate to have access to a range of P&G Professional products that are tried, tested, and developed explicitly for health and care environments.
It is also worth noting that many of these products will save energy. Ariel Professional is an excellent example of a product that will work at low temperatures and assure care providers that laundry is spotlessly clean. It is also important to remember that many of these products have been tried and tested and maximise the efficiencies of domestic staff but also give the reassurance of the best possible sanitation and germ control.
These are really rough times for the care sector, but it is heartening to know that there are ways in which we can be effective in sanitation and cleaning processes, thus ultimately providing a high quality of care, while at the same time maximising staff efficiency.
