Social Care Workers

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Wednesday 7th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the recruitment of nurses is extremely encouraging. We have had an enormous response, with more than 10,000 nurses already recruited and recruitment rates to universities for nursing qualifications also up. We have an enormous marketing campaign supported by broadcast and social media. However, more needs to be done and we are very focused on this area. The use of agencies provides some surge capacity for hospitals—it has a role—but I completely acknowledge my noble friend’s point that agency support needs to be used in a considered, thoughtful and commercially intelligent way.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB) [V]]

My Lords, the introduction of living allowances for nursing students has improved recruitment this autumn. Stable funding for social care purchasers and providers in both care homes and domiciliary-based service is necessary to ensure dignity in care for the vulnerable in our society. It is essential that careers in social care are attractive and that staff are supported to deliver high-quality personalised care to clients. What plans do Her Majesty’s Government have to support local authorities, further education colleges and social care providers to train and retrain social care staff? Central funding is necessary. Incentives are needed to demonstrate that those joining the social care workforce are as valued by government and society as those working in the NHS.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes her point extremely well. We want social care to be a profession that people seek out, where they seek professional development and where they can find a fulfilling lifetime career. That will not be true for everyone, but we need a backbone of people who are committed to social care. That is why we have massively increased the funding to local authorities so that they can address the challenge of social care, and why we have published the adult social care coronavirus winter plan in order to provide short-term support for local authorities to achieve exactly what the noble Baroness has spelled out.