Major investment into social care is needed to ease the corridor crisis, bring more nurses into the sector and prevent system-wide failure, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Congress has heard.
Nurses from social and secondary care settings described how lack of social care capacity was preventing timely hospital discharges and worsening the long-term health of vulnerable patients.
Attendees at RCN Congress in Liverpool this week highlighted how failure to invest in social care would worsen the existing crisis in the sector, with a growing ageing population and rising nurse vacancies in the sector.
Leading the debate was BJ Waltho, former RCN Congress chair, who highlighted the ‘time bomb’ of financial difficulties facing many primary and community care providers.
‘We need to look at the root causes and invest in prevention through primary and community options, with councils who pay most of social care financially squeezed and overstretched,’ she said.
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‘We must invest in the social care workforce or risk the whole system collapsing,’ she added.
Ms Waltho pointed to the major workforce shortages facing adult social care, with many providers struggling to recruit and retain staff.
‘Investment in social care in the UK is needed to address the demands and workforce shortages.
‘Introducing new immigration rules by ending the recruitment of care workers from overseas is not the answer,’ she added.
Yesterday, nurses at Congress warned of the ‘incredibly miserable’ consequences of the government’s plans to ban the recruitment of care workers from overseas.
Ms Waltho also warned that unnecessary hospital stays increase patients’ risk of infection and hinder their physical and mental recovery, potentially leading to increased healthcare costs for the NHS.
Investing in social care pay
The resolution was seconded by Charlotte Jakab-Hall, lead for education and skills development at Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, who said the social care workforce remains ‘underpaid, under recognised, and overlooked’.
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‘We have to urgently invest in long term decisions. We need pay parity. We need training and progression rates.
‘Most of all, we need to elevate the voices of our social care workforce,’ Ms Jakab-Hall said.
Her concerns were echoed by Jenna Gettings, an advanced district nurse practitioner, who said nurses in her team are leaving their posts to find better paid work in other industries.
‘Our social care colleagues are part of the wider integrated community team, and we have many, many vacancies.
‘Unfortunately in social care, this can be due to the fact that they face poor wages, no affordable housing.
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‘They can get better pay in the tourism industry; this impacts greatly on the care we can provide,’ she explained.
