A major campaign has been launched to ensure qualified staff who work in care homes and domiciliary care in Wales are paid a minimum of £20,000 a year.
Mario Kreft MBE, the chair of Care Forum Wales, said they had been condemned to low pay for many years because of the “morally bankrupt” formulas used by local authorities and health boards to calculate the fees for social care.
According to Mr Kreft, the heroic response of care workers in saving lives during the coronavirus pandemic had highlighted their true value and it was high time it was recognised by the authorities who commissioned publicly funded social care.
It was, he said, a “national disgrace” that the 2020 Fair Pay campaign was necessary but he hoped it would shame the councils and the health boards into taking action to finally ensure that qualified care workers could be paid properly after a quarter of a century of a mismanaged market which has seen social care being treated as a “Cinderella service”.
As a result, the frontline workforce had been left behind.
The Welsh Government had shown the way earlier this year when they announced a one-off £500 bonus payment for social care staff.
It was very welcome recognition and now local authorities and health boards should follow suit by updating their funding formulas so that qualified care workers received at least £20,000 a year as a bare minimum.
He said all those who worked in social care deserved at least the Real Living Wage. One of Mr Kreft’s fears was that the NHS will effectively poach social care staff to cope with the extra demands caused by the second surge of the virus which was already under way.
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Pay rates in the NHS were historically higher than those available in care homes and domiciliary care because their funding in relative terms was a lot more generous.
Mr Kreft said: “Social care staff have risen magnificently to the immense challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic and the public understand better than ever that these people do have important skills and are vital to their communities across Wales.
“They are an army of heroes and should be viewed as a value rather than a cost to society.
“It is high time that when local authorities and health board commission publicly funded social care services that the formulas they use finally recognise their true value and enable providers to pay frontline staff a minimum of £20,000 a year from April 1 next year.
“Existing formulas that use the basic living wage as their benchmark are unacceptable, particularly given what the sector has achieved this year and the support the sector has from the public.”