Home care leader tells MPs care workers shouldn't have to ask for minimum wage

“The home care sector often feels as though it’s thrown scraps from under the table of the NHS”, the chief executive of United Kingdom Homecare Association told MPs in a speech calling for a national minimum fee rate for home care.

Giving evidence to the Health and Social Care Committee this week, Dr Jane Townson said: “We need to have a national mandated minimum fee rate for home care so that, as an absolute minimum, providers can pay the national legal minimum wage. We shouldn’t even be having to ask for that".

Dr Townson said the national minimum fee rate for the home care sector and a workforce strategy should be included as part of a 10-year plan for social care. Referring to a social care plan she told MPs sitting on the Committee: “We overall need a vision and a strategy”.

‘Unlike home care', Victorian children were at least paid for shifts

Describing home care as being treated by the government like a “Victorian child” she said: “Unlike home care, Victorian children were at least seen if not heard and when they were sent out to work on minimum wage in Victorian factories they were at least paid for shifts rather than by the minute.

“We still have a long way to go to ensure that social care workers are seen as an integral part of the system".

Dr Townson tells Jeremy Hunt the DHSC's knowledge of social care is 'weak'

In her evidence to the Committee, which is chaired by England’s former health secretary Jeremy Hunt, Dr Townson said: “Home care came into the pandemic with low status and in a weakened condition.

“The knowledge of home care and social care more widely in the Department of Health is weak.

“One and a half million people work in the social care sector – that’s more than in the NHS. The NHS has a People Plan, we have nothing so far for social care.

“But the tasks and the skills and the competencies that [care workers] have to perform are really complex, and now digital has been thrown into the mix as well, and people’s needs are more complex. So we need to understand what skills, what competencies, what training, what standards we need and then make it possible to deliver those.”

Testing 'very difficult to get hold of'

Dr Townson described home care workers as working hard to keep people safe during the coronavirus pandemic “even though testing has been very difficult to get hold of”.

When the Committee asked her about getting tests, she said: “Now it’s become really difficult because more and more people have been promised tests. Schools have gone back and universities. It’s very difficult even for people with symptoms to get tests quickly.

“We still haven’t made any progress on getting asymptomatic testing for the live-in care workers.

“We would argue that in areas of local lockdown where transmission are higher home care workers ought to be on the routine testing list as well.”

Some 850,000 people are being supported by formal home care and Carers UK estimate that an additional 4.5 million people have become informal carers since the COVID-19 pandemic began - taking the total of informal carers to 13.5 million.

Dr Townson warned MPs at the Committee: “The balance between formal and informal [care] really needs to be looked at to ensure everyone can keep going...because it puts pressure on the whole family”.