Issue - meetings

An update to the Board on the impact of the recruitment and retention challenges currently being faced in the adult social care market, the workforce pressures within the children’s public health and children’s social care commissioned provision and the mitigations being undertaken. Board support is sought to the short-term actions and long-term options being taken locally to assist/improve recruitment and retention.

A comprehensive update was provided to the Board by Zoe Mayhew, Strategy and Commissioning Manager, Targeted Support and Integration. This was accompanied by a presentation, focussing on the service areas that were under most pressure. It covered the impact of the recruitment and retention challenges currently being faced in the adult social care (ASC) market, the workforce pressures within the children’s public health and children’s social care commissioned provision and the mitigations being undertaken.

Data was provided on the increasing staff vacancies for the country as a whole and reporting the position in Warwickshire. There were significant issues with recruitment and retention of front-line care staff across learning disability supported living schemes, domiciliary care services (including extra care housing and specialised supported housing provision), residential and nursing care homes. This was resulting in a commissioned care market that was unstable and at risk of not upholding consistency of service delivery and acceptable standards of quality.

The Council continued to passport the national funding to the commissioned provider market and in total £28million had been allocated since the start of the pandemic. There were three main funding streams concerning infection control and testing, workforce recruitment and retention and additional winter workforce funding. For the longer term, WCC was developing a workforce strategy to respond to the ongoing workforce pressures within the commissioned social care market and a first draft of this strategy would be available in April 2022.

Subsequent sections of the report looked in detail at each of the following areas:

·       Domiciliary Care

·       Residential/Nursing Care

·       Community Equipment Provision

·       Adult Social Care job vacancy and turnover rates

·       Children’s Public Health and Social Care Commissioned provision

The financial implications were reported. This included the inflationary uplift on salaries and an outline of how the workforce pressures within commissioned social care provision were likely to result in increasing costs for the County Council. In response to the challenges a number of short and longer-term solutions were proposed which were set out within the report.

The Board discussed the following areas:

• Councillor Roodhouse spoke of the excessive hours being worked by care staff currently and the lack of recognition they received for their service. A difficulty was people leaving care for better rates of pay elsewhere. The challenges for care staff were increasingly complex in supporting older, frailer people. Providers welcomed the initiatives but were unclear how this would be coordinated over such a large number of organisations. WCC could do more on visibility and career progression. Previously there was a coordinated programme working with universities to provide a pathway from care into health services, but this seemed to have ceased. His view was the market was brittle, that the frail, older people needed more specialist care and yet staff were being paid a minimum wage whilst working long hours. The need to use of agency staff overnight was a further concern. He asked how the initiatives would be rolled out.
• Zoe Mayhew gave an outline of the process used to respond in a  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4