Care shortages cause hospital gridlock

Our Chief Executive Stephen Hammersley responds to a Care Quality Commission (CQC) report

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and social care in England. A report by CQC last week highlighted how a lack of capacity in adult social care has led to gridlock in the whole health and social care system, with only 2 in 5 people able to leave hospital when they are ready to do so. This is largely down to staff shortages in adult social care, with 165,000 vacancies in the workforce.

Our Chief Executive Stephen Hammersley was invited on the radio station United Christian Broadcasters (UCB) to share his thoughts on the issue.

Asked about why we are seeing this gridlock, Stephen highlighted deficiencies in how adult social care is viewed. He said, “Adult social care is seen as the second-class citizen – it’s seen as secondary to the health system. But unless your adult social care is working well, your more expensive hospitals are going to get clogged up.”

Stephen highlighted the need to pay higher wages to attract more people to work in the sector, acknowledging that care work is both emotionally and physically demanding, while also incredibly rewarding.

He explained that Pilgrims’ Friend Society is able to ensure high levels of care because we are able to subsidise what we do through charitable resources. However, he warned that we as a country cannot rely on small organisations such as ourselves to pick up the cost and called on the Government to start paying the true cost of providing care, whether that be in care homes or in the community.

Stephen pointed out that unless someone is medically ill being cared for in a care home or their own home is a better option by far. He said, “We all know what it’s like if you visit somebody in hospital, it tends to be quite a singular experience. You go and visit the person in the bed. They may interact with the person either side, or they may not.”

Commenting on Pilgrims’ Friend Society care homes, he said, “It’s a family environment, people are interacting with each other, people are interacting with our staff. We’ve got... Christian activities going on, so people worship and pray and share and sing... all those little things that make life fulfilling. ”

Asked what we as Christians could be praying in regard to this issue, Stephen said, “I think we should pray... that we rediscover what read in James – that the religion that God requires or sees as acceptable involves looking after widows, people who are vulnerable.”

He added, “Christian people and churches are spread in communities right across the country. So let’s pray for a God-given vision of the role that we can play so that we can be salt and light in this issue and not just standing on the side-lines complaining.”

You can listen to the full interview here.