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  • NHS Confederation - System on a cliff edge: addressing challenges in social care capacity (28 July 2022)


    • UK
    • Reports and articles
    • Pre-existing
    • Original author
    • No
    • NHS Confederation
    • 28/07/22
    • Everyone

    Summary

    Lack of capacity in social care is having a severe effect on NHS services as hospitals are unable to discharge patients without appropriate care arrangements in place. This is causing delays right across the healthcare system. In this report, NHS Confederation highlights the risks to patient safety caused by the workforce crisis affecting social care in England. In the Confederation's latest survey, 99% of healthcare leaders agreed that there is a social care workforce crisis in their local area, and almost all agreed that it is worse than a year ago and expect it to deteriorate into this winter.

    The report recommends the government focus on the following key priorities to deal with the crisis:

    1. Increase pay in the social care sector, starting by immediately implementing a national care worker minimum wage
    2. Publish a long-term, properly funded plan to develop the care workforce and offer career progression opportunities
    3. Commit to increasing overall investment to increase access to care to those who need it, meet future demand and pay more for care

    Content

    Key points

    • There is unsustainable pressure on health and care services, driven strongly but not exclusively by the severe capacity challenges affecting social care. Like the NHS, the sector faces steep vacancies and is struggling to recruit and retain staff desperately needed to keep people well at home and support them to leave hospital safely.
    • 99 per cent of healthcare leaders responding to our latest survey agreed that there is a social care workforce crisis in their local area. Almost all agreed it is worse than a year ago and expect it to deteriorate into this winter.
    • These pressures are impacting the whole health and care system’s ability to deliver care across community and acute settings. For instance, 85 per cent of those surveyed agreed that the absence of a social care pathway is the primary cause of delayed discharge of medically fit patients.
    • Almost three-quarters (73 per cent) said a lack of adequate social care capacity is having a significant or very significant impact on their ability to tackle the elective care backlog. Over 80 per cent said it is driving urgent care demand.
    • Although health and care are inextricably linked and interdependent, social care is not just about helping to alleviate pressure on the NHS. The care delivered by social care services is critical to the wellbeing of the nation. However, patients will continue to face long delays for treatment unless the government invests in social care to boost capacity. Healthcare leaders stand in support of their colleagues in social care and are calling for urgent government action to tackle this capacity crunch.
    • Healthcare leaders are calling on the government to back social care with a fully funded pay rise to boost recruitment and retention, alongside providing greater overall investment and improved career progression opportunities. This will help to stop the exodus of staff leaving for better paid and less stressful roles in other industries like hospitality. There is no time to waste, and action must be immediate to not only ensure people do not have their health outcomes further threatened, but to also ensure capacity gaps are not worsened.
    • Healthcare leaders are clear that the NHS and social care will sink or swim together. New integrated care systems (ICSs) encompass both health and care and are acutely aware that both need sufficient resourcing if ICSs are to succeed in their essential task of improving health and sustainability.
    • So, what now? Healthcare leaders are asking for a ‘realism reset’ on the state of health and care. This needs to properly acknowledge where the ten years of austerity in the 2010s have left health and care services. It also needs to include an acknowledgement that social care is not ‘fixed’ as the government continues to insist. The priority must be to close the gulf between demand and capacity – particularly in the face of continued COVID-19 spikes, a cost-of-living crisis and what we expect to be another gruelling winter.
    NHS Confederation - System on a cliff edge: addressing challenges in social care capacity (28 July 2022) https://www.nhsconfed.org/publications/system-cliff-edge-addressing-challenges-social-care-capacity
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