Shortage of 28,000 workers lays bare London crisis in social care

The extent of London’s social care crisis was laid bare on Wednesday as new figures showed the capital is short of 28,000 workers.

Data published by Skills for Care showed London’s vacancy rate stood at 12.6 per cent in March this year – by far the highest total of any region in the country.

It comes amid warnings that social care workers are deserting the industry “in droves” due to poor pay, burnout and job insecurity. Many have sought better paid work in supermarkets or hospitality.

London saw a 44 per cent rise in vacancies in the year up to March 2022 as care providers struggled to recruit workers. Across England, there is currently a staggering 165,000 vacancies across the sector.

Analysis by Skills for Care, an industry body for social care, found that care workers are among the lowest paid roles in the economy with a median hourly rate of £9.50.

Staff vacancies and retention issues in the sector are compromising the quality of care offered to patients, experts have warned.

Simon Bottery, a senior fellow at the King’s Fund, a think tank, told the Standard that the price of rent and the soaring cost of living in London “could help explain why the vacancy rate is so high”.

“If you are going to increase the number of people working within the care sector, then you have to increase pay. The Government has refused to address this question in any meaningful way.

“Most people would agree that the difficulty of the job and the skills it requires suggests that it should be paid at a higher rate, particularly given the value it provides for society.”

A study published by the King’s Fund last year found that nine out of the 10 largest supermarkets paid more than the average social worker receives.

Mr Bottery said that poor pay progression was a major reason for many workers leaving the sector after just two years, as well as insecure zero-hours contracts.

“It is possible that workers would accept a lower starting salary if there was a sense that they would be paid more as they built up skills and experience. But unfortunately, in many cases, that does not happen.

“There are some career development opportunities, but for an awful lot of people the rate they get paid on day one really doesn’t increase year after year.”

Analysis of the London workforce by Skills for Care for the year up to March 2022 found that 68 per cent of the workforce was black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME) while 80 per cent were female. Skills for Care said that workers on zero-hours contracts and those under 25 were more likely to leave their posts.

The crisis in social care is directly impacting London’s hospitals as beds are taken up by elderly, vulnerable patients with no care package to be discharged into. This leads to gridlock in A&E, with the most recent figures showing that 22,000 Londoners waited over 12 hours for treatment in February.

Pay has remained low for care workers as the spending power of local authorities, who commission services from private care providers, has fallen sharply in the last decade. This means that the rates that providers pay to their staff remains low.

Unlike NHS employees, care workers lack both an established national framework of pay rates and the collective bargaining power of large unions.

“Social care is provided by around 18,000 separate organisations… you can’t have a clear structure to agree and negotiate wages within that,” Mr Bottery added.

Ministers faced criticism earlier this year after it emerged a £500m funding package for social care workforce funding had been halved.

Nuffield Trust deputy director of policy, Natasha Curry, said the announcement was a “particularly low blow amid a cost of living and recruitment and retention crisis affecting social care”.

NHS leaders have previously called on the Government to implement a national care worker minimum wage of £10.50 an hour to fix the workforce crisis.