How do we solve the social care crisis ?

[Worriedddd]

We have complex needs patients being stuck in hospital for up to 2 years. Some even more they are ready to leave just there's no social care placements and they can't get the right staff anyway. For minimum wage carers will have support people with very challenging needs. There is high risk of assault in many care settings employers don't offer the right training like de-escalation and breakway. . You could get more money working for Lidl and aldi. Even with immigration people leave and find another job. What's the solution to this ?

Better pay.

Doesn't help that many good care staff were sacked because they didn't want to be forced to have a covid vaccination.

Modern medicine is to blame for this, the ethics of keeping people alive is a desperately needed public discussion. I don't believe it's tenable anymore.

Also better working conditions

More staff, better training. Better sick pay, mat pay etc.

Basically everything the private sector hates

££££ and making care an actual career

Not just something any 18 year old with a hair and beauty qualification goes into.

you see it all the time online ‘I’ve got no GCSEs and can’t string a sentence together, what jobs are out there in the local area’ and all the replies will be ‘x care home is looking for staff’ ‘go be a carer hun’

then they weren’t good care staff

if they don’t give a shit about those they care for they should never be in that role

We need a "next stage" plan for after hospital for those with care needs.

Old fashioned convalescent homes. It is then taking the pressure off hospital beds, with convalescent care, physiotherapy, etc helping re-enable people to move home with a care plan in place, or to a care home if needed.

@RedAppleGirl

While I agree, I dont think euthanasia is the answer

Nor do I think we're going to be able to change public opinion in the short term.

That's not true I'm fully vaxxed but the vaccine protects the person having the vaccination not other people. Hence it still spreads round hospital and care homes.

Categorically incorrect

I really liked the idea of a National Social Care Service as someone in politics (no idea who) came up with recently. Give people a pay scale and a progression route, standardise roles, pay and conditions, give carers clear responsibilities and a professional body akin to those of nursing and teaching, and fund it as a nationalised service.

They do need to fund healthcare better as well, which would help, because if more people's illnesses were managed in an appropriate and timely manner they would be less likely to need as much social care as early in life as some people currently do.

Nurses shouldn't come out of university with insurmountable debts, we should be paying them £20k a year to train (forfeited if they don't work in the NHS for X time afterwards) like they did with teaching for a while, to help older retrainers with families and career changers. This is now one of the most expensive countries in the world to study nursing and the nursing crisis has a lot of overlap with the social care crisis.

Carers should need a level 3 qualification in care to work in health care, like in Ireland, with in-role training for those who haven't achieved this level, but we're a long way off this right now.

It's a complex situation with a lot of interdependencies though.

As long as the country is intent on keeping people alive for as long as possible regardless of their quality if life and state if health then the only solution is to have more staff and pay them more. That said I don't think young people want this sort of work and the difference between claiming benefits and earning is too small.

Immigration , imo, is not the answer. Bringing in people because they will work for less is a massive mistake. They will need additional state support to just survive in the uk and it just all ends up costing the taxpayer.

The other option is to properly pay people to look after their relatives so some can have mure stay at home care.

I think we need to reposition the money going to the NHS. It shouldn't be one or the other. It should be both cumulatively.

How many people are happy to raise money for the NHS or clap for nurses, without giving that same respect to the social care sector? After all, if we can fix the social crisis, we are also directly helping the NHS because it would free up such a whopping proportion of beds, leading to better care all around.

If I was a politician, I personally would do the following (of course, this is all in an ideal world scenario):

Living arrangements.
Focus heavily on elderly living requirements as much as first time buyers. I've spoken on here at length before about how there are no bungalows for older people to move into where they could easily live independently at home without needing care. Property developers should factor in the same proportion of their plans to create homes for older people as they do affordable living.

That way, the people who have had a fall or can no longer manage their stairs can still be independent in their own home without bed blocking because their home is no longer fit for purpose.

I think we also need to realise that there comes a time when you have to downsize. My parents moved into a bungalow at the age of 60, and I remember asking them why, and they said it was so they could always remain living at home. They didn't need a 4 bed house just to themselves, it was too big for them. But by moving early, they have been able to enjoy their home and make it exactly what they wanted rather than being forced into somewhere they didn't like. I understand this perspective - my current next door neighbour is 90+ and lives alone in a huge 4 bed house. He has carers 4 times a day, and his whole house is rigged up with cameras so his family who live the other side of the country can keep an eye on him. But because he had a stroke, he is unable to speak - a few weeks ago, his daughter phoned me because her dad had had a fall and hadn;t been able to get up for 12 hours (no idea why the carers hadn't been there that day). At this point, we need to take responsibility for ourselves and realise that as lives change, so do our accommodation needs.

Upskill carers - formal qualifications perhaps?
Why isn't there a degree/apprenticeship in care? Too many people see it as low paid profession because it's not given the same level of respect that nurses get. Really, they should be given almost equal billing - both are hugely valuable roles. If the profession was better regarded and seen as a vocation, more pay could be offered and it could be seen as a career choice with progression and banding scales rather than NMW. I guess my perception of care is that it's NMW for life, with little opportunity to progress and earn more money. If that vision could be changed, it could maybe improve the recruitment?

Much better pay, and I feel like there should be more rules around running a care home. I worked in a few when I was younger which were mainly run by money hungry business men, and when they ran the place into the ground they shut down. I don’t know, it feels to me like a nursing home shouldn’t be able to just shut down, like a hospital wouldn’t without things being put in place (and don’t get me wrong, far too many hospitals etc have shut or shut wards).

Perhaps more of a societal change to looking after our own elderly family members too? This would require a lot of changes too though as as it stands most people are under immense pressure already with work/life balance.

Definitely for instance I got a nasty bite at work, we are trying to discharge but what care assistant is going to want to do this for min wage, 14 hour shifts and no sick pay.

A lot of people are saying 'better pay'. I agree with this but how would it be funded? I thought the average home place was over a grand a week already, I don't think many people would be able to afford more than this privately. It can't be funded centrally without a massive increase in taxes

Also are home carers still only paid for the time they're actually with a client? For all the time driving around etc I was losing hours of pay every week which is why I stopped doing care work.

Carers allowance needs to be increased to at least match minimum wage. There are many people who would prefer to be a carer for a loved one than go out to work and then have carers come into their home to do the looking after, but they can't afford to quit work to do it themselves. Increase carers allowance, the numbers of family carers will increase, and more people can be released from hospitals.

Care homes are private businesses on the most part. So no extra taxation should be required.

Id be looking into a windfall taxation scheme for those business, and putting into play % based salary rules too (no one can be paid more than x% more than the lowest paid in the company)

Care homes charge a lot privately, but they pay their staff terribly.

@DrinkFeckArseBrick it depends on whether you're talking about carers in care homes or carers in the community. It would be a lot cheaper to pay carers in the community better and to ensure there were suitable retirement properties on each new development as a PP suggested, than to fund 24/7 care home places for people just because there's a rift right now between managing at home and what's available at a care home (and what it costs). Not everyone in a home needs the same level of care.

Where I live ALL the new builds are over 60s living complexes/flats.

100% inheritance tax.

Well, it's always been the same, hasn't it?
A sum of money to set more care homes up for those 'bed-blocking' & pay staff sufficient wages, would be much cheaper in the long term than allowing bed blocking to continue. But that's too simple for those who make the decisions, to consider..

There is a shift it seems. A lot of companies around here are advertising on their vehicles that they pay travel time and, clearly, provide a car for their carers.

Pay staff alot more , improve conditions and training and generally value staff better.