Senior life specialist and Leaders Council member Alison Hesketh recently appeared on the Irwin Mitchell Podcast to discuss the current outlook for the social care sector and her thoughts on recent care reform proposals.
Hesketh [pictured] is the director and founder of Wiltshire-based TimeFinders, a company which bridges the gap between the care industry and the legal and financial professions. She appeared on the Irwin Mitchell Podcast alongside guest host Tim Farmer, clinical director at Comentis, a firm combining clinical expertise and tech-led innovation to help the financial, legal and healthcare sectors identify those at risk.
On the agenda for the discussion were the general outlook for the social care industry, which is currently hampered by vast recruitment shortfalls, and exploring whether government reforms would go far enough in addressing the issues faced by the sector.
A report from ADASS published in April 2022 put the scale of the problem into perspective with the startling statistic that more than 500,000 adults were currently on the waiting list for social care due to demand and supply issues, more than double the number from 12 months before.
When confronted with that figure on the programme, Hesketh said: “This is over 500,000 people who aren't getting the care they need to live, which means they’re getting sicker quicker and are going into hospital when they don't need to go into hospital. They are adding to the NHS burden for ambulance care and A&E when being admitted, and they can’t then get out of hospital because there is nobody to care for them when they come out.”
Hesketh went on to explain her view that the NHS and social care services needed to be recognised as being hand-in-hand. She also shared her perspective that the government’s recent Health and Care Act fails both to recognise this and does not provide any concrete measures for dealing with staffing issues in the sector.
“We can't look at social care in isolation, it has a dramatic impact on the NHS. If we look at the recruitment crisis, this underpins that figure of people who aren’t getting the care they need. Unfortunately, the government’s social care reform bill [Health and Care Bill] does not go anywhere near addressing that recruitment crisis.”
While Hesketh shared her relief at the government’s move to recognise care as a skilled industry enabling care providers to bring in workers from abroad more easily through visa schemes to plug the gaps, she warned that it would only provide a short-term solution to a fundamentally enduring problem.
“Thank goodness the government did do a U-turn and suddenly declared that care workers were indeed skilled people and therefore companies could recruit from abroad, but there are two issues with that. One is that it is a very short-term solution for the problem. Secondly, it takes longer to bring carers in from abroad. There are cultural differences, language differences and the additional training that is sometimes necessary before they are ready to start working in the care sector is another factor. This is without mentioning the fact that we're actually taking people from countries that probably need carers themselves, so there is that moral issue that we have to consider.”
Hesketh went on the emphasise that any viable recruitment strategy had to aim to raise the status of carers. Then and only then, Hesketh explained, will it be possible to effectively recruit and retain.
“The only viable long-term solution for solving the care recruitment crisis is to increase the status of carers and that's not just about money. Although money is a very important part, there is more to take from reports that cleaners get paid significantly more than carers do. That's not to denigrate cleaners, but it just shows how society looks at the people who provide such amazing and unbelievably essential services. This needs to change.”
The full interview with Alison Hesketh on the Irwin Mitchell Podcast can be accessed here.
