Peter Lazenby
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SOCIAL care workers should be given a £500 bonus to persuade them not to quit their jobs as the sector heads for a potential winter crisis, NHS chiefs will urge today.
Care homes and home care service providers currently face a shortage of 100,000 staff.
NHS Providers fear that even more staff will quit to take better-paid seasonal jobs in hospitality, supermarkets, or from online firms such as Amazon.
Staff shortages in care homes and the care provision are already leaving vulnerable patients filling hospital beds because they cannot be discharged into care.
Care homes have been reported to be rejecting requests from local authorities for care home places and care services because of the staff shortages.
The problem has been worsened through the departure of staff unwilling to be compulsorily double-vaccinated against Covid-19.
NHS Providers chief executive Chris Hopson said: “Colleagues in the social care sector we’ve spoken to think the size of the bonus might need to be a minimum £500, so with 1.5 million social care staff that comes to a total of £750 million, which is a huge amount of money.
“It is this kind of immediate, emergency action that the government needs to be thinking about in the next fortnight because our system has to stop the current flow of people leaving social care going into other industries like retail, hospitality and logistics.
“We know those industries are trying to secure a Christmas workforce as the next six weeks is where they make a significant amount of their profit.
“That’s why Amazon and others are paying a substantial bonus. If we don’t stop the loss of social care staff, that will be a real issue and it needs to be looked at really quickly.”
It comes as a separate report for NHS Providers found that the health service is facing unprecedented levels of pressure for this time of the year.
In a poll, they found that 85 per cent of trust leaders are worried that insufficient investment is being made in social care in their area, which has a knock-on effect of delaying discharges of people from hospital.
