This is Homecare Association's submission to the Public Accounts Committee's Reforming adult social care in England Inquiry, dated 12 January 2024.
In the submission, we give our views on how to tackle low pay in the homecare sector, referring to our Homecare Deficit 2023 research, which found that an extra £2.08 billion per year across the UK is required to ensure that homecare workers can receive a fair wage, while enabling services to be of good quality and financially sustainable. We highlighted that we found only 5% of UK public organisations purchasing homecare services paid our Minimum Price for Homecare, in our December 2023 report.
We comment on career development in the workforce, including the steps we are taking as a professional association to support the sector, and look at the funding challenges for social care in England going forward, and how can they be overcome.
Finally, we set out the case for reform and investment in the social care workforce in a sustainable way to enable fair recognition and reward of professional carers for the skills and experience needed in these roles.
