There are too few care workers, paid too little. That was the simple summation of the care sector’s workforce challenge by The King’s Fund think-tank in its recent blueprint for wide-ranging care reform.
While other parts of the masterplan will spark disagreement, not least a call for the assessment of people’s care needs to be taken away from local authorities in favour of a national process, no one is likely to take issue with its labour-force premise. The question is: how do we find more care workers and pay them better?
New pension scheme for adult social care
Clearly the two things are related. Recruits will be attracted, and will stay longer, if pay and conditions are improved, and the sector’s embryonic fair pay agreement is indeed due to start tackling this from 2028. But the £500m currently set aside for it is pitifully inadequate and it is hard to see a great deal more taxpayers’ cash being injected in prevailing economic circumstances.
If wage rates are not going to take off in the immediate term, can non-pay factors play a part? The announcement by Government of a new, sector-wide pension scheme for adult social care offers much promise and has been widely welcomed by employers as well as trade unions which were calling for it.
The scheme will be one of the first of a new type of ‘collective defined contribution’ funds designed to give members a target income in retirement without employers having to guarantee it, as under a defined benefit plan. The only one set up so far is for Royal Mail staff. Risks will be pooled, the target income revalued annually, and an individual worker will be able to change jobs within the sector without leaving the scheme.
Overcoming cynicism
At present, many care workers opt out of contributions to their employer’s individual pension scheme, though numbers are hard to come by. They often accumulate a collection of small pension pots as they move from job to job and there is little faith that a career in care will end in a comfortable retirement.
Research by the Centre for Care, for which I am an adviser, suggests care workers are typically cynical about the benefits of auto-enrolment in pension schemes, introduced in 2012 for all UK employees aged 22 or over earning at least £10,000 a year. Duncan Fisher, a lead researcher, warmly welcomes the plan for a sector-wide fund but says workers must be able easily to obtain clear and reliable information about it, including having paid time off to attend guidance sessions.
The right thing to do
As Health and Social Care Secretary Yvette Cooper said when she unveiled the proposed scheme at the Labour Party conference, it is ‘just wrong’ that those whose jobs often involve helping older people maintain their dignity should themselves face insecurity in later life. We can start to put that right.
Click here for CMM’s coverage of The King’s Fund’s proposed reforms. Then, share your thoughts on this Social Care Insights by leaving a comment.
David Brindle is a social care commentator and former Public Services Editor of The Guardian.
Email: [email protected] Linkedin: @David-Brindle