Some care homes in the Harrogate district have had to cut back services because unvaccinated staff left rather than having covid vaccines.
The government made it mandatory for all care home workers to be vaccinated by November 11. It said this would protect people being cared for.
Richard Webb (pictured), corporate director for health and adult services at North Yorkshire County Council, told a media briefing this week that nine staff out of 2,000 at council-run care homes had refused to have the vaccine and therefore either had been redeployed or had their contracts terminated. Five of these were in Harrogate.
“That has caused some issues for us. We are obviously trying to replace people who have left us and that has meant we have had to downscale temporarily some of our day and respite services as people know them.
“We’ve put alternatives in place but that might be in a different location to your normal location for a break so we are in touch with families about that.”
Mr Webb said there were 500 care providers in total across North Yorkshire, adding:
“We’ve had approximately 240 people out of 20,000 who decided not to have the vaccination. Again, unfortunately they will be leaving social care. But overall that’s an incredible record and compares very well with many other places across England.
The county council began a social care recruitment drive Make Care Matter to plug the staff shortfall. Mr Webb said it had so far generated 170 applications and that 31 interviews were coming up and 14 people had been appointed to jobs.He said there would be a second recruitment phase after Christmas.
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Major drop in applications for social care jobs across North Yorkshire
The gravity of the staffing crisis in social care has been underlined as North Yorkshire County Council launches its biggest ever recruitment drive for the sector.
The number of people applying for social care jobs has plummeted, partly due to yesterday’s introduction of mandatory vaccines for care staff.
A full meeting of the council next week will hear at least three of its executive members highlight concerns over the 70 per cent drop in applications for jobs in social care across the 500 providers in the county since July and providers continuing to go out of business, partly due to staff costs.
On any given day there are at least 1,000 jobs available across the county.
A high percentage of the county’s care homes are in the Harrogate district.
In an attempt to fill the vacancies, providers in the county are offering extra financial incentives to staff to take on the roles, from a £1,500 golden handshake for a care setting nursing role in Northallerton to carers being offered £2,000 for referring three friends.
Councillor Michael Harrison, executive member for adult services, said:
“We have people who have joined us from all different types of experiences, some from the entertainment sector; actors, drummers, from the travel sectors; pilots, cabin crew, and everything in-between.
“There is a great career to be had in care and great stability and we support people who join us with career development. From the word go you can make a big difference to somebody’s life in this job; the work that you do really counts towards improving lives and no two days are the same.”
There are 20,000 people in North Yorkshire working in the care sector, from the 13,000 care and support workers in 500 organisations providing services in residential care and people’s homes through to social workers, project managers and administrators.
The alerts come after the authority said it was having to intervene in a number of care homes to keep them staffed and the government undertook to provide workforce recruitment and retention funding to support local authorities and providers to recruit and retain sufficient staff over winter.
In a statement to the meeting, the authority’s leader, Councillor Carl Les, said:
“I am pleased that as the government launches a nationwide initiative we are undertaking more locally the biggest ever recruitment campaign to attract people into a rewarding and progressive career.”
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The council has recently warned the situation would only worsen with about 200 fewer care workers in the county due to rules requiring all care workers to be vaccinated.
Before yesterday’s deadline, numerous foreign-born care staff in North Yorkshire had said they would leave the UK if they had to have the covid jab to work.
Pay concerns
Care workers have also suggested the lack of pay progression, with staff with more than five years’ experience being paid just 6p more an hour than those with less than a year in the role in 2020-21 is a cause of recruitment difficulties.
In a statement to the meeting, Councillor Michael Harrison, the authority’s adult social care executive member said the county’s situation reflects fierce competition within the labour market alongside hospitality, retail, heavy goods transport and construction.
He said:
“Pressures are building within nursing, residential home and domiciliary care capacity as a result of workforce pressures within the external market, and we continue to see provider failures in the system.
“Packages of care are being handed back to the council to either re-source or find alternative solutions to keep people safe. This is putting significant pressure on and impacting our in-house provision as we try to find solutions for people or fill the gaps using staff from our services.
“This is impacting our ability to provide re-ablement and respite services. Complex care packages are being handed back at short notice alongside those requiring two carers or in more rural locations. In addition we are seeing care home providers withdraw from providing nursing care or withdraw completely from the market.”
Warning of “difficult choices” in the upcoming Budget, the council’s finance boss Councillor Gareth Dadd will tell the meeting that securing the necessary workforce remains acutely challenging.
In an attempt to ease staffing pressures, the council is working with providers and has just launched a recruitment campaign focusing on the diversity of career opportunities in care.
Coun Harrison said:
Care staff shortages ‘critical’ ahead of compulsory vaccine deadline“We are working with providers and partners to look at options and ideas to work more efficiently and promote people’s safety should we not manage to recruit more people to the sector.
“A system plan is in place with short, medium and long term actions to address issues relating to workforce, which includes capacity for registered manager support to care homes, recruitment to reablement, and recruitment to NHS posts to ensure sufficient intermediate capacity is available to meet the growing demand.”
Care staff shortages in North Yorkshire have reached a “critical” stage and are only likely to worsen when compulsory covid vaccines come into force on November 11, a council boss has warned.
Justine Brooksbank, assistant chief executive at North Yorkshire County Council, said 252 workers have yet to receive a first vaccine dose and some staff in the already depleted workforce had now begun the process of leaving.
She said 13 staff have served notice to leave, while three have been redeployed and a further 12 are awaiting clinical exemption.
However, Ms Brooksbank added redeployment into other areas such as health services is “proving difficult” as the government has recently ended a consultation on compulsory vaccines for these workers as well as care staff.
She said:
“This situation is likely to worsen the already critical staffing shortages across the county’s care sector.
“Adult social care is vitally important to our residents and we are pulling out all the stops to support the sector in every way possible during current challenges.
“We have done everything possible to communicate with all our care staff about the benefits of covid vaccination and to assuage any fears they may have.
“The county council along with other care providers as well as national government are next month launching a robust recruitment campaign in order to address the significant and growing pressures in the care system.”
Read more:
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Nationwide staff shortages have led to warnings from England’s care watchdog that there will be a “tsunami” of people without the care they need this winter unless action is taken.
The Care Quality Commission said in a recent report that staff are “exhausted and depleted” and that immediate action is needed to address the problem.
On Thursday, the government announced an extra £162.5 million to boost the adult social care workforce.
This is in addition to £5.4 billion earmarked for social care over the next three years from the government’s health and social care levy, which already includes £500 million to be spent on the workforce.
Compulsory vaccines for all health workers?
Meanwhile, the health secretary Sajid Javid said on Monday he was “leaning towards” making covid vaccines compulsory for health workers.
It is estimated around 100,000 NHS staff nationally have yet to get their first jab following the recent consultation into the matter.
At Harrogate hospital, around 350 frontline staff have not been fully vaccinated – representing just under 10% of the 3,598-strong workforce.
Dr Jacqueline Andrews, executive medical director at the Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust, previously said staff were being encouraged to take up the vaccine and that managers were speaking with these workers about their concerns.
She said:
“We have encouraged and supported all our staff to be fully vaccinated against covid to keep themselves, their families, fellow colleagues and patients safe and improve our organisational resilience over what is likely to be a challenging winter.”