Care Homes: Staffing

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness. I think that the House will recall that I have mentioned on a number of occasions that this is a critical part of the workforce plan. What has become clear, even in the short time that I have been at this box, is that social care is a vital cog in the whole chain, so to speak, which goes right back to ambulance wait times and A&E, because if we do not get the flow going out of the system, we have got problems there. So I can assure the noble Baroness that it is key to my thinking, and to all our thinking.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a future member of the NHSE board. I want to ask how we are going to monitor the advancement from care homes back into domiciliary care, in order to ensure that we do not just move the problem from the hospital to care homes so that, very quickly, there are no beds left in care homes to continue this transfer system. In particular, who is going to pay for the residents in those care homes, and for how long?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

The question is absolutely correct: as I said earlier, less than 10% of these 13,000 people need to be in care homes full-time. The danger is often that once you put them there, they remain. That is why the package is focused on stays of up to four weeks, and absolutely making sure that they are monitored through, because it is vital. It is a step-down situation to help people ease from the acute—where they need a bit of extra support—so that, most importantly, they can get back home as soon as possible.