Skills and commitment of homecare workers should be rewarded well above National Living Wage
United Kingdom Homecare Association (UKHCA) believes that the skills and commitment of homecare workers should be rewarded well above the National Living Wage.
For visit based care, where care is usually purchased by reference to "contact timeĀ" (the time spent with people using the service), UKHCA calculates the minimum sustainable price for local authority care from 1 April 2016 to be £16.70 per hour. This amount needs to cover the costs of care, including careworkers' pay, travel time, travel costs and providers' requirement to operate a sustainable service.
We have repeatedly reported on the disparity between rates paid by local councils and the actual costs of care. In previous research, we have found that just one in seven councils paid the equivalent price at the time.
Whilst we and our members have welcomed the introduction of the National Living Wage from 1 April 2016, it has added further cost pressure on providers' already stretched resources. Even where councils believe that they have covered the additional costs of the National Living Wage this year, increases for 2016-17 have generally been insufficient to address the underlying underfunding from previous years which we calculated was already in excess of £500m for 2015-16.
It is imperative therefore that Government act urgently to address this critical underfunding and councils adopt commissioning practices which take account of the real cost of providing care. Failure to do so threatens the continued sustainability of social care services for older and disabled people in England.
Employers must comply with the National Minimum Wage Regulations, which, from the 1st April 2016, includes the National Living Wage. UKHCA provides a comprehensive National Minimum Wage Toolkit to assist employers in their obligations. (Available from: http://www.ukhca.co.uk/downloads.aspx?ID=422).
This toolkit includes specific advice for homecare providers offering live-in homecare services. We have also included a detailed guide to live-in care by Anthony Collins Solicitors in Homecarer - our members' magazine. http://www.ukhca.co.uk/pdfs/homecarer%20may%202016_NLW.pdf
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