Dorset's care home sector under pressure due to staff shortages
A Dorset Councillor is suggesting Brexit, vaccination rules and better pay in other sectors is leading care homes losing workers
Dorset's care sector remains under pressure with staff leaving – and still has three per cent of care home staff unvaccinated.
Weymouth councillor Dr Jon Orrell asked Tuesday’s Dorset Council meeting: “Does Dorset adult social care have capacity in people and money to pick up the strain of the coming Omicron wave?”
He told councillors that care homes had been losing workers who are unimmunised, gone due to Brexit or attracted by better pay in other sectors.
Cabinet portfolio holder Peter Wharf gave a full response to the question – saying the council was doing what it could to help but said more funding was still needed,
“We are working with local providers to find ways to help recruit and retain staff in the sector and we distribute the additional Government grants to providers, to help with this as swiftly as we can. In addition, we have agreed reduced car parking charges for carers in order to help and provide an incentive.”
He said the council is also promoting the national ‘Made with Care’ campaign to try and attract more staff.
Other measures include submitting workforce returns to the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services requesting that increased funding is needed to enable parity between NHS and social care roles and that care workers be added to the Shortage Occupation List and the salary threshold for immigration be reduced.
“We would welcome any ideas councillors have in terms of promoting careers in social care,” said Cllr Wharf.
He said that the local Public Health team was continuing to work with the adult social care sector, and other higher risk settings to identify, test, isolate and support organisations with effective infection prevention and control measures.
“The team have gained lots of experience in responding to these outbreaks and deploying local public health measures funded through additional monies such as the Contain Outbreak Management Fund. They have recently agreed to extent local contact tracing and targeted testing services, acknowledging that Dorset is possibly heading into a further wave so we can continue to provide an effective response.
“In terms of the specific impact of the new variant, it really is still too early to tell, but again, with the help of additional national measures we are taking action to try to reduce the impact and spread as quickly as possible.”
Cllr Orrell said despite the Government national insurance hike to provide an additional £1.7billion for the sector the British Medical Journal had estimated the real need at £7.6billion.