Social Care

Baroness Wheeler Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab)]

My Lords, today’s CQC report calls on health and social care providers to focus on ensuring that services have the right staff and skills mix to ensure that care is always safe. Does the Minister acknowledge the impact of the funding crisis on residential care and the commission’s concern at the delay in the introduction of the care cap until 2020? Both residential and daycare have high vacancy and turnover rates and a chronic problem in recruiting and training care staff, particularly under-25s. Would it not be outrageous if the Treasury kept the £6 billion and did not use it to try to address those issues?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

The noble Baroness raises two interesting points. There is a recruitment and a training issue involved in many care homes. This is being addressed by the Government in two ways: first, by raising the minimum wage to the national living wage so that it rises to about £9 an hour by 2020; and, secondly, by the introduction of the care certificate which came out of the Camilla Cavendish report after Mid Staffs, which should improve training in the sector. The funding of local authority-provided care is the issue on which we are awaiting the outcome of the spending round discussions.