In the current climate, working in the social care sector is no easy task. With resources already stretched prior to the outbreak of Covid-19, the pandemic has only exacerbated these troubles, while the double-pronged impact of coronavirus and new immigration rules following Brexit making recruitment a daunting challenge.
Nevertheless, care providers continue to carry out their day-to-day work and deliver those services that are key to the wellbeing so many that are in need of it. Care More, based in Sutton, South London, is no exception.
Speaking to The Leaders Council, managing director Prash Patel explained that in the face of any challenge, Care More always puts its service users first and looks to provide an exceptional standard of care.
One way that it has sought to do this is by separating its care offering into two distinct arms: one for domiciliary care provision, and the other within care homes.
“We operate in a slightly different way to other domiciliary care providers,” Patel explained.
“Our company is split into two distinct halves. On the one hand we provide care for people in their own homes, and on the other we provide nurses and carers to nursing homes as and when required.”
Delving into the motivation behind such a decision, Patel revealed how he felt it would enable Care More to provide the best customer service possible based on his previous experiences working in high street retail.
“I started Care More as I believed I could make a meaningful difference to the care industry. My own background in the high street, with over 20 years of owning and running retail businesses, meant that we placed considerable importance on customer service and loyalty. We believe that the way in which we treat the customer is absolutely fundamental to how we operate. Our priority is to ensure that whoever we are treating gets exceptional service, above and beyond what is considered normal for the industry.
“We opened at the end of 2015, with an annual turnover of around £110,000. In 2021 our turnover was £2.5 million.”
Discussing the two distinct halves of the Care More business in greater detail, Patel told of how the decision to split its care provision came about after the company successfully bought itself out of a franchise.
Patel said: “The decision to separate the two has motivated the staff in the two separate companies and allows them to work in line with their own systems. By using their own equipment and working in their own space, they are able to provide precisely the kind of service their specific role requires.
“We recognise the fact that there is a huge demand for providers like us to offer care in people’s own homes. We appreciate the way in which sub-standard care can impact the entire industry by damaging the reputation of more reputable care providers, which we consider ourselves to be. As such, we recognise the importance of investing in our staff and paying our carers well, supplying some with cars to ensure they provide the best possible quality of care they can.”
Despite paying its staff workforce the most competitive salaries possible, Patel was candid in admitting that - as is the case in the wider care sector - recruitment remains a major challenge in the current climate with the skills shortage proving a significant obstacle.
“There are a number of challenges within our industry and the first we face is recruiting staff. The skills gap impacts us, and due to the fact that a number of our carers visit people in their homes, it is preferable they are able to drive in order to move around with ease. The majority of those we service are within a five-mile radius, which is simply too far to travel without a vehicle of some kind. We also require a level of flexibility that can be challenging, and at times we need our staff to end late and start early.
“We also find cash flow a difficult issue. In order to attract and maintain staff we pay them on a weekly basis, and during periods when we are paid late as a company, this can create issues. At a time when the cost of labour is rising, we find ourselves increasingly squeezed on all sides. This is coupled with the fact that we do not get paid for all the care we provide, as sometimes we are not sent written confirmations of short notice change requests, which then lead to disputes on payments which we always have to concede and make a loss.”
Patel went on to say that in his view, the emergence of Universal Credit and cuts to social funding have also caused issues for Care More’s service provision in different ways.
He elaborated: “We do believe that the introduction of Universal Credit has been to the detriment of our service. In instances where a carer is on this benefit, they are only legally able to work 16 hours a week before it is cut. This proves an issue, especially when we consider that parents on this benefit are already unable to work on school holidays or on weekends and can only work 16 hours a week while their children are at school.
“We are also impacted by the reduction in social funding, which encourages social services to cut call times and to attempt to change double calls into single ones. This puts additional strain on our staff and does not provide sufficient time for us to act in those instances where an increase is required for the safety of the customer.
“The increasing age of our population means that we require more complex training for our staff in order to cope with a variation in needs. Work that was once the responsibility of district nurses now falls to us, and, with no additional funding provided, we are not suitably compensated for this change in role; however, we do take on board that the councils are under extreme financial pressures, and so we take on these additional roles to better our reputation and service levels to our customers and bolster our relationships with councils and CCGs.”
However, despite the difficulties that Care More faces, Patel is eyeing up further expansion of the business and continued delivery of the standard of care that it prides itself on.
He said: “In the future, I hope to see us open more branches, at least extending to Surrey and Sussex. We also hope to improve the work we do in terms of efficiency, moving towards an increasingly digital workplace. Having already made the transition to electronic monitoring, we hope to expand our IT usage as it advances, so that we can make our services more efficient and environmentally friendly.
“Overall, our ambition lies in continuing to provide the services we do at present, maintaining our great customer service and extending our profile over the coming years.”
Photo by Georg Arthur Pflueger on Unsplash
