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12
Nov 2021
Major drop in applications for social care jobs across North Yorkshire
The gravity of the staffing crisis in social care has been underlined as North Yorkshire County Council launches its biggest ever recruitment drive for the sector.
The number of people applying for social care jobs has plummeted, partly due to yesterday's introduction of mandatory vaccines for care staff.
A full meeting of the council next week will hear at least three of its executive members highlight concerns over the 70 per cent drop in applications for jobs in social care across the 500 providers in the county since July and providers continuing to go out of business, partly due to staff costs.
On any given day there are at least 1,000 jobs available across the county.
A high percentage of the county's care homes are in the Harrogate district.
In an attempt to fill the vacancies, providers in the county are offering extra financial incentives to staff to take on the roles, from a £1,500 golden handshake for a care setting nursing role in Northallerton to carers being offered £2,000 for referring three friends.
Councillor Michael Harrison, executive member for adult services, said:
There are 20,000 people in North Yorkshire working in the care sector, from the 13,000 care and support workers in 500 organisations providing services in residential care and people’s homes through to social workers, project managers and administrators.
The alerts come after the authority said it was having to intervene in a number of care homes to keep them staffed and the government undertook to provide workforce recruitment and retention funding to support local authorities and providers to recruit and retain sufficient staff over winter.
In a statement to the meeting, the authority’s leader, Councillor Carl Les, said:
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The council has recently warned the situation would only worsen with about 200 fewer care workers in the county due to rules requiring all care workers to be vaccinated.
Before yesterday's deadline, numerous foreign-born care staff in North Yorkshire had said they would leave the UK if they had to have the covid jab to work.
Pay concerns
Care workers have also suggested the lack of pay progression, with staff with more than five years’ experience being paid just 6p more an hour than those with less than a year in the role in 2020-21 is a cause of recruitment difficulties.
In a statement to the meeting, Councillor Michael Harrison, the authority’s adult social care executive member said the county’s situation reflects fierce competition within the labour market alongside hospitality, retail, heavy goods transport and construction.
He said:
Warning of “difficult choices” in the upcoming Budget, the council’s finance boss Councillor Gareth Dadd will tell the meeting that securing the necessary workforce remains acutely challenging.
In an attempt to ease staffing pressures, the council is working with providers and has just launched a recruitment campaign focusing on the diversity of career opportunities in care.
Coun Harrison said:
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