Northumberland suffering from severe shortage of domiciliary care workers and nursing home staff

Also known as home care or in-home care, domiciliary care can include a range of support for service users with daily living activities, such as bathing, dressing, meal preparation, and medication management.

However, the UK as a whole is currently facing a shortage of workers in the sector and Neil Bradley, service director for strategic commissioning and finance at Northumberland County Council, has warned the county is no different.

A council report said there were around 200 people for whom home care has been assessed as the best way to meet their needs, but for whom there is not enough staff to arrange any service. The report branded the situation “clearly not acceptable”.

Speaking at a meeting of the authority’s health and wellbeing overview and scrutiny committee, Mr Bradley said: “Employment in this sector is not attractive enough both in terms of salary and the perception of it.

“With care homes, we’re being told fee levels are too low in Northumberland but according to the market, there doesn’t seem to be a problem. Homes are still changing hands and being bought as a going concern.

“We’ve had a new build care home in Alnwick, so we added additional capacity to the market.

“There clearly is a problem in domiciliary care, as in most local authorities. We can’t get enough workers. It is the sheer stress of trying to run a domiciliary care business and trying to get staff.”

The county is also facing a shortage of nursing staff for nursing homes, which was blamed on a wider shortage of nurses across the board.

Mr Bradley was discussing the council’s market sustainability plan for adult social care. Coun Les Bowman, Labour councillor for Holywell, called for more detail.

He said: There’s no plan in this documents to what happens if the situation falls apart. I understand a care company went out of business recently and that caused a lot of problems.

“Has that been overcome? Have we thought of putting in a ‘what if’ scenario?”

Mr Bradley explained that it had been some time since a major provider handed back its services – although when it did happen in 2017, it was “really difficult to manage”.