Trust in care homes has slumped, leaving half of the British public lacking confidence that friends or family would be well looked after.
Nationwide polling for the Guardian revealed nine out of 10 older people believe there are not enough care staff, and half have lost confidence in the standard of care homes since the start of the pandemic.
The survey conducted by Ipsos this month follows a doubling in public dissatisfaction in the NHS and exposes deepening fears about the fitness of a social care sector that had its weaknesses exposed by Covid-19, which claimed 36,000 lives in care homes in England alone.
More than 165,000 adult social care jobs remain vacant, including more than one in 10 care worker posts. The Guardian has revealed how, last year, nearly £2bn in taxpayers’ money was spent on places in below-standard care homes in England, many of which are deemed “not safe” by the regulator, while some private operators have been collecting millions of pounds in profits.
The slump in confidence comes as Oonagh Smyth, the chief executive of the government-funded Skills for Care agency, urged ministers to create an NHS-style workforce strategy and said that for the first time since gathering data, the social care workforce shrank by 3% last year.
This month the government caused anger when it halved planned spending of £500m to boost the social care workforce, a move described by the King’s Fund thinktank as a “dim shadow of the wide-scale reform to adult social care that this government came into office promising”.
The polling also showed almost two-thirds believe care workers are underpaid – a greater level of concern than for nurses who are due to strike over the May Day bank holiday.
The Relatives and Residents Association (RRA) said the polling tallied with calls to its helpline about the “harm and anguish caused by poor care and frustration at the inconsistency in standards”.
“We must weed out the poor providers and invest in skills – care workers must become our most valued workers, not the least,” said Helen Wildbore, the RRA’s chief executive. “Tomorrow, any one of us could need them.”
Labour seized on the figures as evidence “the public have lost confidence in the government’s ability to get a grip of the social care crisis”.
“Thirteen years of broken Tory promises have left our care system on its knees with record staff vacancies, millions without the help they need and it’s the NHS and families left picking up the strain,” said Liz Kendall, the shadow care minister. Kendall said Labour would provide a new deal for care workers and focus more on caring for people in their own homes, although the party has yet to make spending pledges.
Care England, which represents the largest commercial care operators, blamed the fall in public confidence on “negative media coverage” and successive governments that “have starved our sector of resources for years”.
About 380,000 people live in care homes for older people in the UK and that number is forecast to rise sharply in the coming years, driven by a predicted rise in the number of people living with dementia from 900,000 to 1.6 million by 2040.
Close to 13% of care worker posts are vacant in England and before the latest rise in the minimum wage to £10.42 for people aged over 22, the average hourly pay for a care worker in December was £10.03 – in the bottom 10% of the worst-paying UK jobs, according to Skills for Care.
The Department for Health and Social Care said it was “committed to improving the quality of care for everyone” and said the care home regulator, the Care Quality Commission, has this month started assessing councils’ delivery of their social care duties, which will “identify where improvement and additional support is needed”.
“We are supporting social care with up to £7.5bn over the next two years. Last week we set out the next steps in our plan to reform social care, backed by £700m over the next two years to put people at the heart of care.”
A further pot of up to £600m had yet to be allocated but some could be spent on workforce improvements, it said.
