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The Future of the Care Homes Sector - What Can We Expect?

on Monday, 04 April 2022.

Following attendance at this year's Care England Conference, we provide a summary of the key challenges, developments and reform that lie ahead for the care home sector in the future.

What Are the Challenges Within the Care Homes Sector?

The challenges that were discussed remain the same, however ideas improving the quality of care were plentiful and we await whether Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary's promises will come to fruition.

The Conference was reminded of the sacrifices made by the staff and the sheer dedication to their work at the care homes throughout the country during the pandemic in a powerful opening film.  However, many challenges articulated at the Conference over the past 10 years or so remain. They include staff shortages, a smaller recruitment pool following the UK's decision to leave the European Union, and the inability to compete with staff working in the NHS. Care workers can receive up to £2 more per hour, if they work in Sainsbury's.

Many care homes operate on an not-for-profit basis, where their income is drawn from fees received from local authorities, private fees and charitable donations. However, in many cases the local authorities fees do not cover the actual cost of looking after service users which is subsidised by private income. We were told that the shortfall in some cases can be as much as £200 per week per service use. Clearly businesses operating on this footing cannot continue indefinitely. 

Care homes, unlike the NHS, cannot offer a decent final salary pension. The pay differential between those working in the NHS and care sector, at similar levels, can amount to some 20% in terms of salary.

There is an inability on the part of the care home sector to offer career progression, and improving skills is a problem which is leading to burn out, according to Matthew Gould, CEO of NHS X. In his talk on digital transformation, he also highlighted the lack of investment in digitalising service user records due to lack of affordability.

The refusal by some staff in the care homes to vaccinate has also been problematic. 

What Proposed Solutions Were Suggested?

There were many ideas floated about. Ed Balls, broadcaster and writer advocated the need to build a political consensus to last more than one parliamentary term to radically change the social care system in order to overcome challenges by lack of funding. 

Stephen Chandler, ADASS President, suggested that care operators lobby their MPs and particularly local authority over funding. It was also recognised that given the goodwill that currently existed towards care sector workers, this was now the right time to press for reform in the sector. The overriding consensus of opinion was the need to deal with the current challenges faced by the sector now.

How Likely Are We to See Reform?

Sajid Javid, the Healthcare Secretary gave the final address and labelled his speech 'Recovery and Reform in Social Care'. He focussed on a 10 year vision to improve the sector through funding. He mentioned that, from 1 April 2022, the social care levy will generate an estimated £5.4b over the next three years. Part of that money would be used to improve working terms and conditions of the staff. A further quarter-billion of the funding would be used to develop employment careers and education through credited qualifications. Other plans would be to provide £300,000,000 over three years to support an elderly population to remain at home, before having to enter into a care home for their final years. Some £573,000,000 would be available to make essential adaptation to their home. 

The Health Secretary also said that he wanted to focus on technology and to the digitalisation of service users' healthcare records and acknowledged that some 40% of care homes currently operating were still using a paper based system. 

However, whilst Government investment into the sector is welcomed, the fact remains that funding remains a real issue for many operators to continue to operate in a highly regulated sector. There was no specific mention as to how businesses could be able to increase the salaries of their staff so as to make working in the sector more attractive and at least as competitive as working in the NHS or the local supermarket.

Recommendations for Care Home Employers

In order to combat recruitment difficulties, care home employers can offer to sponsor employees where they offer employment in the sector, the chances of receiving a work visa for up to four years will be greatly increased if the prospective employee can speak English. The right to bring family will also be included assisting the process.

Funding for local authority service users will have to be negotiated on preferential terms to stop businesses running at a loss. Again, this will be challenging where local Government budgets are stretched. Failure to address will only continue to cause businesses to close, and in some cases, sell their properties for development, or worse - still drive businesses into insolvency.

There are no short-term fixes to the challenges outlined above but care homes need to keep an eye on Government funding promised by National Government to assist with investment in technology and funding generally and the introduction of education to enhance careers in the sector.

As a firm we have the experience to  assist care homes in meeting these challenges.


For more information regarding the challenges and future of care homes, please contact Michael Delaney in our Healthcare team on 07909 912564 or complete the form below.

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