Report Calls for Urgent Action to Reduce Social Care Workers Pay Gap

The report shows that by projecting forward social care pay-trends since the incumbent Government was elected in 2019 it will take an astonishing twenty-three years for equal roles in the NHS and social care to arrive at equal pay Despite the first edition of Unfair To Care in 2021 highlighting a then £7 444 pay gap with the NHS and an escalating attrition rate, the Government has failed to respond to issues of workforce renumeration and strategy

It would take 23 years for current rates of uplift to deliver parity with the NHS The report demonstrates that modern frontline social care requires complex technical and emotional skills to effectively support people who commonly have complex medical and behavioural needs proving that social care is significantly undervalued Commenting on the report Professor Vic Rayner OBE, CEO of the National Care Forum –said: “This is a really valuable report, building on the benchmarking work delivered last year by Community Integrated Care It brings together insights from across the care and support sector which highlight, yet again, the level of skill needed to be a care and support worker and just how demanding it is to provide high quality, person centred care and support

Last year Community Integrated Care partnered with job evaluation platform Korn Ferry to conduct an independent assessment of the role of a frontline Support Worker objectively assessing its true value across sectors

VACANCIES ROSE BY 52% IN 2022

With social care vacancies rising by an unprecedented 52% this year Unfair To Care – 2022-23 has revealed the roots of this crisis Demonstrating that social care workers are undervalued by more than £8 000 compared to their exact equivalents in the NHS and that at current rates it will take more than 23 years to arrive at equal pay the report warns that without urgent action this crisis is set to escalate for more than a generation

Providing a detailed look at the reverberations that low pay and the recruitment crisis creates on care workers people who draw on social care and society at large alongside exclusive polling on public views of parity between health and social care it offers an essential analysis of one of the biggest crises facing the UK today The full report can be found at www unfairtocare co uk

The 2022-23 edition of Unfair To Care startlingly reveals that social care workers would need a 41% pay rise – equalling £8,036 – to have parity with their direct equivalents within the NHS – Band 3 Healthcare Assistants It demonstrates that modern frontline social care requires complex technical and emotional skills to effectively support people who commonly have complex medical and behavioural needs proving that social care is significantly undervalued

With the cost-of-living crisis meaning that many people are no longer able to accept a job that is vocationally rewarding for significantly less pay than they could immediately command elsewhere the sector is facing an unprecedented talent drain resulting in 165 000 vacancies on any given day

The average Support Worker in England receives a salary of £10 01 (outside of London) – 89p per hour below the Real Living Wage the rate that is independently defined as the minimum for a reasonable quality of life Totalling at an annual salary of £19 573 Support Worker pay falls well short of the NHS Band 3 average take home ‘Total Pay’ of £27 609

Unfair To Care highlights that social care pay has tracked above the percentage increases in minimum wage rises for the first time in four years, increasing by 8 2% compared to the National Living Wage increase of 6 6% However the reality is that these pay rises are being funded by organisational reserves meaning care providers are facing greater peril than ever Analysis indicates that providers are utilising their limited financial reserves to fund these rises in a desperate bid to reduce their attrition rates as people seek more viable employment in other sectors

Social care providers are largely dependent upon funding from local authorities who are at financial breaking point and have limited scope to support pay increases A recent sector report cites evidence that 80% of providers believe that their income will not fully cover wages with further research from the CQC Market Oversight Scheme stating that many care provider CEOs predict an acceleration of unviable local authority contracts being cancelled With these relatively small pay rises neither being sustainable nor achieving a competitive market rate of pay that stems the exodus of care workers providers are putting sticking plasters on gaping wounds

Public Support For The Sector

Despite the lack of government action Unfair To Care finds significant public concern around this growing recruitment crisis in social care In a new Ipsos survey commissioned by Community Integrated Care 85% of GB adults aged 16-75 said that shortages of social care workers is a problem for society in the UK with 67% regarding it as a ‘major problem’

There is also significant public recognition of the shared value of both social care and the NHS Ipsos found that 91% of respondents think that social care is important to society with 94% recognising the NHS in the same terms and 90% of the public classified social care as a skilled sector

A Call For Action

Unfair To Care calls upon the Government to give an immediate and fair pay rise to all frontline social care workers It highlights the need for the Government to apply the NHS Agenda for Change framework which provides a system of pay bands for workers based upon skill accountability and experience to ensure fair pay across these symbiotic systems

The report clearly articulates that pay is only part of the solution needed to both fix the employment crisis that is engulfing a sector and to extend the societal impact of social care Its recommendations include a significant expansion of training and development options, a focus on creating routes to career progression, the introduction of professional registration campaigns to raise the esteem of the sector investment in mental health support and wellbeing strategies

With social care delivering almost £59bn to the economy in 2022, and there being the potential to implement progressive reforms that improve efficiency and quality of life through delivering joined-up services reducing the burden on family carers and embracing innovations Unfair To Care highlights that the Government does have scope for action