Chancellor urged to match words with actions and provide funding to ease social care recruitment crisis
Hft is calling on Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond to match words with actions and provide an emergency cash injection for the social care sector in his Spring Statement, to help providers address the ongoing recruitment crisis in the sector. Last month, the charity published its annual Sector Pulse Check, which provides a yearly snapshot of the financial health of the social care sector. The report warned that 80% of providers cited the "enforced low pay model" - where local authorities commission fees at the lowest wage level possible - as the biggest challenge for recruiting new staff. As a result, 63% of providers reported increases in agency fee spend, and that it was now a major financial pressure (a fifty percentage-point increase from the 2017/18 survey).