Suffolk County Council must use it’s multimillion-pound adult social care underspend to support the sector’s struggling staff, UNISON says today.
The council’s latest budget forecast shows it’s spent £6.7 million less than budgeted on social care in the first quarter of the 2022-23 financial year, while homecare waiting lists have risen from an average of 76 in 2020-21 to 278 this year.
UNISON, which has launched the You Care We Care campaign to fight for better pay and conditions for care staff in Suffolk, said the council should be using the money to attract staff to the sector.
Suffolk County branch secretary Neil Bland said: “Hundreds of older people in Suffolk and their families are needlessly stuck waiting for urgent support because the council won’t spend money where it needs to.
“It’s sitting on millions of pounds which it could be using to give care workers a decent living wage, helping attract staff to the sector and retain those who simply can’t make ends meet at current pay levels.
“Until the council starts to put more cash in care workers’ pockets, the whole sector will continue spiralling out of control. A lack of action on pay is doing irreparable damage to Suffolk’s most vulnerable residents.”
Labour councillor Sandy Martin, who highlighted the figures in the budget forecast, said the council’s transformation programme was rightly helping people receive care in their own homes, but that not enough staff were available to provide care, leading to expensive agency workers to fill the gaps.
He said: “It is clear that Suffolk County Council’s refusal to ensure that care workers are properly paid has led to a serious shortage of care workers.
“We have been trying to get the Conservatives to acknowledge this since the start of the year, but while they can fudge their answers to council questions, they can’t disguise the hard facts in this budget report.
“It’s not rocket science – if you don’t pay people enough to live on they will not work for you. The first thing Suffolk County Council needs to do is to renegotiate all their contracts on the basis of all workers being paid at least the real living wage.
“That is what decent councils such as Ipswich Borough Council have done, and there’s no reason for Suffolk not to do it too. The alternative is to leave older people at home without the care they need, or stuck in hospital unable to be discharged.”
