A growing number of care home residents are seeing their care disrupted as providers hand back care contracts to local authorities or are closing down altogether, driven in many cases by persistent and severe recruitment and retention challenges.
One bit of seemingly encouraging news for the older age residential care sector, however, is that reported staffing levels in older adult care homes appear to have recovered in 2022, after a steep fall in 2021. There were 472,500 people working in care homes at the beginning of April 2021, which dropped to a low of 454,900 by the end of 2021, but increased to around 475,500 people by the end of September 2022.
It is less encouraging, however, that much of this recovery seems driven by a sharp increase in the proportion of agency staff, rather than directly employed staff. While numbers of staff directly employed by older adult care homes have only marginally increased since the beginning of this year, hovering just under 441,000, the total number of agency staff employed in care homes almost doubled between April 2021 and September 2022, from around 17,400 to 34,700.
These trends are indicative of problems experienced by care providers in recruiting and retaining staff. While the rates of people leaving the older age care home sector remain relatively stable, there are fewer new starters replacing them. Against the backdrop of rising occupancy levels, which dipped during Covid, and an uptick in demand, vacancy levels are at an all-time high.
As a result, employers are increasingly resorting to using agency staff to fill gaps. Although it might be necessary to fill critical gaps, it comes with increased cost to providers, as well as a potentially detrimental impact on relationships and continuity of care for residents. It is also indicative of a failure by the government to develop a comprehensive and long-term workforce strategy that addresses the underlying issues in the social care workforce.
