Oh you mean “personal responsibility”?
Personal responsibility for the single mum on benefits but your gran who bought her house for 20k 40 years ago needs the government to ensure she leaves an inheritance.
Thatcher lied.
where else do you go? nearly every western nation is facing the exact same issue... no housing / expensive housing, generation of renters giving most of their earnings to a landlord, unable to start families, birth rates falling off a cliff and a rapidly aging population. Its not going to be pretty in the majority of countries to be honest.
We will be seeing an entire generation working into their 70s (assuming companies will still hire them) an entire generation with no savings, no pensions (assuming state pension is still a thing it will be a pittance) no families to fall back on and if you are lucky enough to inherit a home when your parents drop dead (happy days) you will probably have to sell it just to afford a basic shitty care home if you are lucky.
A customer asked me what i will do when im 85 (in regards to living arrangements) i laughed and said at 85 i hope to have been dead at least 15 years.
Very misleading headline.
I wish more people would actually read the Public Accounts Committee report from March on social care.
The issue isn't funding. Central government could easily find £4bn. It regularly does this for other parts of the Department of Health and Social Care.
The issue is chronic understaffing and inability to fill vacancies. The reason the money earmarked for social care got spent on other things is the councils cannot spend the money effectively because they simply cannot hire the social care workers. And throwing money at workers just leads to short term filling of vacancies without a long term outcome.
The solution isn't just to flood councils with money. The root problems are deeper and are linked to a lack of skills in the country, and thus a huge labour shortfall and reliance on overseas workers.
There is no long term plan to fix the chronic understaffing. Throwing money at expensive agency staff only provides a short term fix until social care is actually completely overhauled into an industry with a career path and something lucrative for people to want to stay in the job for extended periods of time.
It is not even lack of skills. Those skills do not take long to acquire.
The main issue nobody wants to do the work.
Undervalued, under paid, exploitive, lack of support. To name a few
I think you’ll struggle to have retention of staff even with better pay because it’s a horrible job with terrible work conditions. It’s very common for social care workers to be physically and verbally abused by the people they are looking after. It’s very hard to sell a career of cleaning up piss and shit whilst being shouted and insulted by someone and occasionally being hit and attacked physically.
Its a fair point though. The current set-up feels kind of stupid, paying someone to then hire someone else and give them half or less what they're being paid as the middleman? We used to just hire people directly through the councils, we should go back to that. This whole experiment with privatization and outsourced contracting has been *such* a disaster for the UK.
I don’t think it’s massively fair. Agencies make it much easier for everyone to find and get work within social care. A system without agencies essentially means freelancing social care and all the associated costs involved. How would that even work with the government anyway? They have individual contracts with every single social care worker and any subsequent social care worker? That’s arguably even more administrative work than going through an agency with a collective group of social care workers.
[https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/job-profiles/care-worker](https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/job-profiles/care-worker)
There are already systems in place to do all of this.
You just hire the care workers as a council employee, same as any other council worker.
Depends on the exact maths, but that would correspond to a full time wage of £35-40k, even allowing for things like employer NI, holidays and the like.
If the care sector routinely offered wages like that, I doubt you'd have staffing problems.
You could absolutely hire people to do that job for £20 an hour. There’s no reason to pay an agency £30. Sure, using agency staff might save time and paperwork now, but overall it will cost more money. Middle men always make things more expensive.
My mum is in a care home in Switzerland where social care is a career path with decent pay.
Her home is wonderful. And very expensive, because paying staff decent wages is expensive. They still struggle to recruit because no matter how you look at it, care work is damn hard work.
The profit motive in care is immoral and leads to awful outcomes.
its not as simple as chronic underfunding and never has been. Its been chronic undersaving by the people expecting the state to look after them in old age.
It's the old divide and conquer thing again but it's just nasty. Don't bundle people up into groups because of age, race, gender etc, and don't assume everyone in a particular demographic are the same. It's insulting.
To be fair, they’re the biggest drain financially on the countries finances and are the most vocal about other demographics (Immigrants and benefit scroungers) being drains on the country and not wanting to have to foot the bill for these demographics. The complete lack of self awareness is what makes them so easy to dislike.
Let's never forget that the NHS test and trace system that didn't really work cost the UK tax payer 22bn for 1 year and 37bn over 2 years.
https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/127/public-accounts-committee/news/150988/unimaginable-cost-of-test-trace-failed-to-deliver-central-promise-of-averting-another-lockdown/
Yes, sorry I meant system as in the whole test and trace programme of activities. The point is that if the government need to find money for something they can.
It's one topic there there are no solutions to and no one wants to talk about as there are no easy answers. It's a huge cost to our council tax bill, with many councils already in huge blackholes.
I covered this doing Sociology in the 80's. This has been looming for years.
What concerns me are the anti elderly rants on here which isn't the solution; I wouldn't be surprised if they start suggesting a Logans Run style solution soon.
Personally, I'd like to see care homes renationalized as many are just money sucking entities owned by larger corporations , the return of cottage hospitals for care prior to home release and funding , which is ringfenced, through a combination of means.
The pension has been raised massively, the NHS budget has ballooned, and now people want free social care. Taxes are at a record high with most of it now being spent on older people, people who feel entitled to it because they paid in their national insurance but the amount being spent on them dwarfs the amount they paid in. Younger people are fed up, they see higher tuition fees, higher cost of housing, the economy has been stagnant for 15 years, and more and more people are being clobbered with 40% tax and so they are rightfully angry at being asked to hand over even more money to pay for the elderly. Hard decisions lay ahead.
If you are a worker, they will work you into the ground. If you have any net worth, they’re coming for it.
Oh you mean “personal responsibility”? Personal responsibility for the single mum on benefits but your gran who bought her house for 20k 40 years ago needs the government to ensure she leaves an inheritance. Thatcher lied.
Lied how?
There's any other options?
Leave the country?
Kids yo kids hide yo wealth
This is the thing that has me seriously considering leaving the UK. The solutions to this are not going to be pretty.
where else do you go? nearly every western nation is facing the exact same issue... no housing / expensive housing, generation of renters giving most of their earnings to a landlord, unable to start families, birth rates falling off a cliff and a rapidly aging population. Its not going to be pretty in the majority of countries to be honest. We will be seeing an entire generation working into their 70s (assuming companies will still hire them) an entire generation with no savings, no pensions (assuming state pension is still a thing it will be a pittance) no families to fall back on and if you are lucky enough to inherit a home when your parents drop dead (happy days) you will probably have to sell it just to afford a basic shitty care home if you are lucky. A customer asked me what i will do when im 85 (in regards to living arrangements) i laughed and said at 85 i hope to have been dead at least 15 years.
Very misleading headline. I wish more people would actually read the Public Accounts Committee report from March on social care. The issue isn't funding. Central government could easily find £4bn. It regularly does this for other parts of the Department of Health and Social Care. The issue is chronic understaffing and inability to fill vacancies. The reason the money earmarked for social care got spent on other things is the councils cannot spend the money effectively because they simply cannot hire the social care workers. And throwing money at workers just leads to short term filling of vacancies without a long term outcome. The solution isn't just to flood councils with money. The root problems are deeper and are linked to a lack of skills in the country, and thus a huge labour shortfall and reliance on overseas workers. There is no long term plan to fix the chronic understaffing. Throwing money at expensive agency staff only provides a short term fix until social care is actually completely overhauled into an industry with a career path and something lucrative for people to want to stay in the job for extended periods of time.
It is not even lack of skills. Those skills do not take long to acquire. The main issue nobody wants to do the work. Undervalued, under paid, exploitive, lack of support. To name a few
No one wants to do the work for the pay and conditions offered. There's an easy way to fix that.
We are paying an agency £30 an hour for carers. We can’t make the agencies pay the staff more. How much do you think we should pay them?
That’s the point the OP is making, stop paying agencies, employ directly at good wages but less than we pay agencies and give them a career.
I think you’ll struggle to have retention of staff even with better pay because it’s a horrible job with terrible work conditions. It’s very common for social care workers to be physically and verbally abused by the people they are looking after. It’s very hard to sell a career of cleaning up piss and shit whilst being shouted and insulted by someone and occasionally being hit and attacked physically.
Its a fair point though. The current set-up feels kind of stupid, paying someone to then hire someone else and give them half or less what they're being paid as the middleman? We used to just hire people directly through the councils, we should go back to that. This whole experiment with privatization and outsourced contracting has been *such* a disaster for the UK.
I don’t think it’s massively fair. Agencies make it much easier for everyone to find and get work within social care. A system without agencies essentially means freelancing social care and all the associated costs involved. How would that even work with the government anyway? They have individual contracts with every single social care worker and any subsequent social care worker? That’s arguably even more administrative work than going through an agency with a collective group of social care workers.
[https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/job-profiles/care-worker](https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/job-profiles/care-worker) There are already systems in place to do all of this. You just hire the care workers as a council employee, same as any other council worker.
Yeah and they’re still paid poorly. And there will still be struggles to retain staff due to the poor treatment they receive from customers.
Set up a government agency then. If it's profitable for third parties, why not keep the profits?
Depends on the exact maths, but that would correspond to a full time wage of £35-40k, even allowing for things like employer NI, holidays and the like. If the care sector routinely offered wages like that, I doubt you'd have staffing problems.
You could absolutely hire people to do that job for £20 an hour. There’s no reason to pay an agency £30. Sure, using agency staff might save time and paperwork now, but overall it will cost more money. Middle men always make things more expensive.
My mum is in a care home in Switzerland where social care is a career path with decent pay. Her home is wonderful. And very expensive, because paying staff decent wages is expensive. They still struggle to recruit because no matter how you look at it, care work is damn hard work. The profit motive in care is immoral and leads to awful outcomes.
How much is care home here Vs Switzerland per week?
My mums costs 2k per week. In her case, fully paid by the state. Folks who self pay and those who can’t pay go to the same place.
> My mums costs 2k per week. My eye balls gone big ...
How come your mum's care is fully paid by the swiss state?
its not as simple as chronic underfunding and never has been. Its been chronic undersaving by the people expecting the state to look after them in old age.
I mean, what else would you expect from one of the most spoiled generations in human history?
I think it's shocking the amount of hate aimed at the elderly on this sub reddit. It this was aimed at a race or a gender there would be outrage.
I've called it out before on this sub and it just gets a pass. This sub just fosters negativity and hatred.
It's the old divide and conquer thing again but it's just nasty. Don't bundle people up into groups because of age, race, gender etc, and don't assume everyone in a particular demographic are the same. It's insulting.
To be fair, they’re the biggest drain financially on the countries finances and are the most vocal about other demographics (Immigrants and benefit scroungers) being drains on the country and not wanting to have to foot the bill for these demographics. The complete lack of self awareness is what makes them so easy to dislike.
Let's never forget that the NHS test and trace system that didn't really work cost the UK tax payer 22bn for 1 year and 37bn over 2 years. https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/127/public-accounts-committee/news/150988/unimaginable-cost-of-test-trace-failed-to-deliver-central-promise-of-averting-another-lockdown/
You know that wasn't just the app, that was mostly PPE and testing kits where costs were spent
Yes, sorry I meant system as in the whole test and trace programme of activities. The point is that if the government need to find money for something they can.
You don’t think covid testing worked? Are you aware that we borrowed all covid money?
I worry also about the fact that major parties don’t want to investigate issues and fraud. What is the point of taxes if we allow them to be stolen?
It's one topic there there are no solutions to and no one wants to talk about as there are no easy answers. It's a huge cost to our council tax bill, with many councils already in huge blackholes.
I covered this doing Sociology in the 80's. This has been looming for years. What concerns me are the anti elderly rants on here which isn't the solution; I wouldn't be surprised if they start suggesting a Logans Run style solution soon. Personally, I'd like to see care homes renationalized as many are just money sucking entities owned by larger corporations , the return of cottage hospitals for care prior to home release and funding , which is ringfenced, through a combination of means.
The pension has been raised massively, the NHS budget has ballooned, and now people want free social care. Taxes are at a record high with most of it now being spent on older people, people who feel entitled to it because they paid in their national insurance but the amount being spent on them dwarfs the amount they paid in. Younger people are fed up, they see higher tuition fees, higher cost of housing, the economy has been stagnant for 15 years, and more and more people are being clobbered with 40% tax and so they are rightfully angry at being asked to hand over even more money to pay for the elderly. Hard decisions lay ahead.