Exclusive: Council boss on Panorama criticises Hancock for 'never talking' about 'phenomenal impact' of social care

Stephen Chandler, social care chief at Somerset County Council who appeared in the recent Panorama programme ‘Crisis in Care’, told homecare.co.uk that health secretary Matt Hancock needs to stop valuing NHS staff more than care workers.

He says: “We need him [Mr Hancock] to start talking really positively about the impact of social care and the impact on people’s lives.

"He constantly talks about nurses, doctors, MPs but you never hear him talking about the phenomenal impact the social care workforce has on helping people live decent lives.”

'Recognise the value of the workforce’

Mr Chandler added: “He needs to talk of the sector, needs to help people who are going to be funding their own care and he needs to fund a sustainable level of care.”

A recent report from the Health Foundation shows social care funding in England will face a £4.4bn gap by 2023. Currently government funding for social care is set to rise at an annual average rate of 1.4 per cent a year. This is much lower than the 3.4 per cent a year the government has committed to the NHS.

NHS salaries have seen an increase recently, however social care wages remain low and are below equivalent salaries in the NHS, according to the report. Some care homes have been forced to close due to a lack of nurses who have found better paid jobs in the NHS.

The imbalance between the NHS and social care is typified by an extra £20bn given to the NHS on its 70th birthday this year and the government's inability to come up with a green paper on adult social care.

The policy paper meant to be a blueprint for social care had initially been due in the summer of 2017 but has been delayed again and again with now no definitive date for its publiciation.

Somerset's director of adult services wants the green paper to: “Recognise the value of the workforce, to make it much more attractive than it currently is and that is about promoting some of the apprenticeship arrangement for people coming into social care so they don’t see it as just being a home care worker or a care worker.

“In the NHS, you can enter the NHS as a health care assistant and theoretically you can work your way up to be a consultant. There isn’t that career path as clearly set out and recognised in social care and I think we need to do that.”

Mr Chandler also recognises there will be a need in the future for more of us to pay for care, saying: “Rather than me worrying about having to use my savings or how to fund my care. I could take out an insurance policy so there needs to be a broader range of options for bringing money into the system.

“It doesn’t have to be a private insurance; the government could underwrite an insurance arrangement because you know one in four of us are going to need some form of support.”

Mr Chandler also understands that “we need something to simplify the interface between NHS so we don’t have people fighting the way between the council and the NHS as we do now.”

‘We have to take an interest in our community’

The second part of BBC One Panorama two-hour special 'Crisis in Care' documentary, which aired on 5 June, followed Somerset County Council’s adult social care department highlighting the increased pressure on local councils to deliver with demand heavily outweighing funding.

The filming which took place over 10 months looked at the problems underfunding has for Somerset County Council and set out the need for a plan to fund care in the long-term.

In the programme, Pat Lees, 86, a widow with no family nearby, had slipped under the radar and was struggling to cope at home, so much so that the Panorama team ended up contacting Somerset County Council on her behalf.

Mr Chandler said: “Firstly, as a society, we have to look broader than just our immediate family and the person who lives next door to us, but we have to take an interest in our community. Show an interest in the people in your street or people in the quarter of a mile radius and just look at what is happening with them because it doesn’t take much."

In parts of Somerset, the council work with agencies who run community cafés. Mr Chandler says: “This is often run in a hotel, a library or children’s centre or GP surgery each week. These places are run by local authority people and volunteers that are genuinely interested in the community.”

Part of the NHS long-term plan which has been released recently talks about developing neighbourhood teams. “The worry I have with this is they often look for the illness and if they don’t see an illness, they often walk away whereas Pat wasn’t ill. Pat didn’t have health issues but was vulnerable.

“We also need to have a bit of infrastructure, we need to be able to have local authorities and the NHS follow up in a much more sustained way so that we, as a local authority go out more to meet and work with people like Pat.

"Not necessarily putting in packages of support. We need community infrastructure and extra funding to enable us to do prevention to help keep people well for longer," said Mr Chandler.

Also in the programme, suffering from multiple sclerosis, Val relied on Alan to do everything for her. Two visits a day from carers had lightened his load until a letter arrived stating the visits were being stopped due to funding.

Mr Chandler said: “The challenges of delivering home care in rural areas, the travel, the cost of travel, the recruitment of staff is difficult and that was really the reasons behind that.”

When homecare.co.uk asked how this can be fixed? Mr Chandler revealed: “There are two ways. One is more money, enabling us to pay providers more money.

“We have been doing some work with our registered care providers association in Somerset. This is the same body that supports home care as well as residential and nursing care.”

Mr Chandler is also looking at how to commission to help providers to be more sustainable: “So we’re currently exploring buying outcomes rather than hours and half hours of care. We want to employ permanent contracts, so we’re looking at the way we commission differently so that will allow the providers the security of employing staff on a permanent basis.”

Somerset Council has also recruited ‘micro-providers’. These are small scale businesses which are helping meet some of the care needs. Mr Chandler says: “We also have Jill, one of our ‘micro providers’ and this is where we supplement or complement the provider market with individuals who will do anything up to 10 hours of support a week. But I think it’s trying to find a variety of ways to bolster the market.”

‘I work with a fantastic bunch of people and I still believe I can make a difference’

The impact of the programmes has been very positive for Stephen Chandler and Somerset County Council: “These programmes going out has actually enthused me even more because of the genuinely positive response that has been universal. Everybody has said it was horrible watching it and really powerful, no one has said it was your fault and you should have done something differently.

"I work with a fantastic bunch of people and I still believe I can make a difference.

“Everybody recognises it as being a systemic issue and they saw our staff and provider staff doing their utmost to provide for people.”

Panorama: ‘Crisis in Care’ is available on BBC iPlayer click here