‘Unprecedented’ social care shortages are being fuelled by government underfunding leading to unattractive pay rates, according to a senior Knowsley Council officer.
Assistant director of social care Jenny Rollinson said the problem was “well documented” and was behind the huge increase in vacancies across the sector at a meeting of the council’s health and adult social care committee held yesterday (January 17).
The committee had met to discuss issues around hospital discharges in the borough, where councillors were told the scale of the current rate of vacancies in social care – with one in ten positions left vacant across the country- was hampering an already challenging situation.
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Responding to a question put by Cllr Kevin Bannon as to the reasons behind the large vacancy rate, Cllr Bannon said: “You mentioned 1.5m workforce at the moment and 165,000 vacancies, is that normal or unprecedented?”
Ms Rollinson said: “It’s normal for industries of this size to carry vacancies and to have turnover and the number will continuously change but it is an unprecedented number of vacancies and it has grown significantly since last year.”
Referring to a recent report by Skills for Care Ms Rollinson said: “That shows the correlation between increased vacancy rates in the social care sector as the economy started to open up after the pandemic and the reduced number of vacancy rates in other sectors such as hospitality and retail.
“It’s normal for the sector to carry vacancies but the vacancy rate is growing.”
Cllr Bannon asked: “What do you think the cause is?”
Ms Rollinson said: “I think a lot of the causes are probably quite well documented in that it’s a highly demanding, highly challenging job and we want to be able to recruit suitably skilled and suitably trained staff into the role but the rates of pay that providers are able to offer to those individual workers need to be able to compete with other vacancies in the wider economy and often they can’t.”
She added: “All that comes down to the money that is available from government in order for councils to pay rates to providers that allow them to pay wages to staff that attracts them into the workforce.”
Ms Rollinson said within Knowsley, the council is working to promote working for Knowsley in adult social care through a workforce strategy.
Cllr Bannon asked if the borough was better than the national average, but Ms Rollinson said “it’s difficult to compare”.
She added: “In terms of social work vacancies in Knowsley, at the last count we had 16 vacant social work posts, which is about 20% of our social workforce.”
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