Social workers recruited from Zimbabwe and South Africa to help plug the social care staffing crisis in North Yorkshire have begun working in Harrogate.
Adult social care has been experiencing well documented recruitment problems in recent years, which has left some providers struggling to hire qualified social workers.
It has previously been reported that on any given day there are at least 1,000 care jobs available across the county.
To address this, a North Yorkshire County Council report said the authority ran several large recruitment campaigns in the UK for more than 30 social worker vacancies but had “very limited” success.
It found recruits were also often newly qualified social workers and not yet ready to manage more complex work.
The report said that with full-time roles unfilled, expensive agency workers have also been used.
Since August, the council has overseen an international recruitment drive with the aim of hiring 30 social workers and five occupational therapists.
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The first cohort of social workers arrived in Harrogate towards the end of last year and the second cohort arrived in January and February of this year.
The new arrivals have been given three weeks of training and have also been allocated a “community buddy” to help them settle into their new country.
North Yorkshire County Council’s executive member for health and adult services, Cllr Michael Harrison, who is also the Conservative councillor for Killinghall, Hampsthwaite and Saltergate, said:
Harrogate care costs climb to £54,000 a year as ‘colossal’ price rises bite“We have recruited 29 qualified social workers from South Africa and Zimbabwe using a network of specialist agencies and working alongside other councils.
“They will work across the county in what is a great opportunity to help this group of professional social workers further their career in North Yorkshire whilst filling vacancies in specialist areas where there is a national workforce shortage.
“We will monitor the success of this recruitment campaign closely, whilst continuing to advertise our current vacancies regionally and nationally.”
Harrogate’s high care costs are being compounded by the cost of living crisis as bosses warn that they have no choice but to pass on some of the “colossal” price rises to residents.
With care homes being hit by huge increases in energy and food prices, the average weekly cost of a residential care home in the district is now £1,029.
That figure remains the highest in North Yorkshire and is equivalent to almost £54,000 a year.
The climbing costs come at a time of significant workforce pressures as care homes continue to rely upon agency staff and constantly recruit to try to fill vacancies.
Sue Cawthray, chief executive of care charity Harrogate Neighbours, described the price rises as “colossal” and said further increases in insurance costs and workers’ wages were adding to the pressures of keeping care services running.
Sue Cawthray, chief executive of Harrogate Neighbours
She added that the only way for care homes to be able to keep their costs down was for the government to provide more funding and support for services.
Ms Cawthray said:
“There is a serious shortage of funding in health and social care.
“This has been going on year after year and the situation is only getting worse as more people get older and need to go into care.”
After years of funding cuts and promises to fix the broken care system, the government earlier this year announced a new £86,000 cap on the amount anyone will have to spend on care over their lifetime.
This was due to be funded by a 1.25% rise in National Insurance, however, the tax rise was reversed by prime minister Liz Truss and funding will now come from general taxation.
The price cap and other measures are to be tested out as part of a “trailblazer” scheme which has seen North Yorkshire County Council chosen as one of six local authorities to introduce the reforms several months ahead of elsewhere.
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There are, however, questions over when this will begin next year and if it will entail a huge bill for the county council.
Aside from the trial, Cllr Michael Harrison, executive member for health and adult services at the authority, said it was doing “everything possible” to support the care sector, although he added these efforts were being made “within the constraints of the funding allocated by central government”.
He said:
“We continue to make the case to the government for comprehensive reform and funding of social care.
“The council is implementing a three-year deal to address the actual cost of care provided by care homes, ahead of many other local authorities.
“We are now working with the sector on a similar long-term plan for home care.”
Meanwhile, the county council has further plans to build an extra care facility after purchasing a £1.8 million plot of land at Harrogate’s Cardale Park, and there are also proposals to introduce “micro-providers” in more rural areas.
Cllr Harrison added:
County council agrees to take part in government adult social care funding pilot“In the Harrogate area, we are pursuing several projects to try to improve market conditions, including identifying potential new opportunities to provide care directly.
“We are also hoping to see the introduction of micro-providers in rural areas and are working with care providers to pilot new workforce models, attracting people to the sector with the prospect of the rewarding careers which can result from caring for others.”
North Yorkshire County Council has agreed to take part in a pilot for a government system to fund adult social care.
A meeting of the county council’s executive heard becoming one of the country’s first five local authorities to take up the government’s charging reforms programme would create a series of uncertainties for the council in an area which already accounted for almost half of its budget.
Nevertheless, officers underlined that if the new system was not working for the authority there would be opportunities to pull out of the pilot.
Although it will be up to the incoming North Yorkshire Council to make a final decision over joining the Trailblazer pilot, after receiving the unanimous support of the outgoing executive the scheme is likely to see numerous measures brought in.
Everybody who is receipt of care will have the right to have an account where the total cost of care over their lifetime is capped.
An £86,000 cap on the amount residents will need to spend on their personal care is set to be introduced in North Yorkshire from January next year, nine months ahead of elsewhere.
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Also, the point at which people become eligible to receive some financial support from their local authority, will rise to £100,000 from the current £23,250.
The council’s social care executive member Councillor Michael Harrison said it was important North Yorkshire helped shape national policy as it had a disperate care market, with 235 care homes spread across England’s largest county.
However, he said the authority did not know if the changes would entail a huge bill for the council as it remained unaware of how many people currently receiving care in the county funded it themselves.
Alongside uncertainties surrounding the information technology needed, the council remains unclear about the impact on the care market there is a risk to the council in that it could cost more than has been budgeted for.
However, Cllr Harrison said it was clear the new system was weighted more heavily in favour of residents, and particularly those with an average amount of savings, than the government.
He added:
Social care at ‘tipping point’ as staff shortages deepen with 1,000 vacancies“It would be a bigger leap in the dark if we weren’t involved in the pilot. There is undoubtedly going to be some unknown consequences and hopefully they will be flushed out during the pilot.
“It also means we are shaping national policy. This is really important that councils with rural areas rather than urban ones with a straightforward care market where the council is the biggest client help shape the system.
“In North Yorkshire we have a huge say in the market, but there’s so many self-funders, the market will take its own course. If it works the benefits are brought to North Yorkshire residents earlier than the rest of the country.
“This is definitely a step forward but there is still a lot of stress in the care sector. We still think more needs to be done to raise the profile and the conditions of those working in the sector to make it more attractive to people.”
Social care in North Yorkshire is facing an imminent staffing crisis health officials have warned after they revealed a worrying drop in the number of people coming forward for vacant jobs.
Richard Webb, director of health and adult services at North Yorkshire County Council, said the sector is facing “unrelenting” pressures and that it had reached “tipping point” over recent weeks with a 70 per cent drop in applications for 1,000 jobs currently vacant.
He said the NHS has also not escaped the staffing problems which existed before the pandemic but have only been exacerbated by the virus outbreak.
Mr Webb told a meeting of the North Yorkshire Local Resilience Forum today:
“We have seen a real tipping point over the last four to six weeks, particularly as the wider economy has reopened.
“What we are seeing is fierce competition between care services, hospitality, retail and other sectors for people to fill jobs.
“We have about 1,000 vacancies in social care across North Yorkshire – that’s not just us, that’s the 500 organisations that provide care in the county – and we have seen a 70 per cent drop in applications for those jobs in the last few weeks.
“In North Yorkshire, we are as well placed as anywhere to deal with some of these pressures, but they are pretty unrelenting and they are probably the most significant I have seen in a quarter of a century working in social care and the NHS.”
Nationally, social care looks after around 400,000 people in care and nursing homes – three times the number in NHS hospital beds.
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There are also around 640,000 people receiving care in their own homes.
Independent Care Group (ICG), a non-profit organisation which provides services in North Yorkshire and York, has raised concerns that as these numbers continue to rise, there may soon not be enough staff to care for the elderly and most vulnerable in society.
Mike Padgham, ICG chairman, said in a statement:
“We are approaching a crisis point where there simply won’t be enough people to go out and provide care to people at home and to those living in care and nursing homes.
“Care providers are facing a daily battle to cover home calls and care home shifts and it can’t go on.”
Mr Padgham is also calling on the government for short-term help and to also accelerate its long-delayed plans to overhaul the social care sector which ministers have pledged to publish by the end of the year.
A specific tax to help find the extra billions needed in funding and directing more cash straight to care homes are all ideas which have previously been brought to table, but these have never come to fruition.
Speaking at today’s meeting, Mr Webb said the reforms would not be a quick fix to the problems the sector is facing and that the county council would continue stepping up its support for care providers.
He said:
“I’m pleased that the government is looking at how it can reform social care, but that will take probably three to five years – it is not going to be an instant solution.
“That is why we have continued to put additional funding into social care while we have been giving so much other support to individual care providers.”
The county council is also urging people to consider careers in social care as part of its Make Care Matter campaign.