'Shocking' salaries of care workers condemned as councillors in Wakefield discuss treatment of elderly people

Financial constraints on private care providers along with rising costs mean many staff in the sector are on very poor pay.

Wakefield Council's service director for older people said that the issue was very common among home care agency staff.

The council's health scrutiny committee has set up an inquiry into the state of adult social care, following recent concerns raised about the quality of some local providers.

Speaking at a meeting on Thursday, Wakefield East councillor Olivia Rowley said she was worried about the low wages of staff in care homes.

In response, council service director Nichola Esmond said: "I couldn't agree with you more.

"It's quite shocking that we have carers on such a low wage - often below minimum wage.

"That's mostly in the domiciliary (home) care area, where they're paid for what they deliver rather than the hours that they do.

"All we can do really is hope for the government's promised paper on funding social care to come forward."

Earlier, Ms Esmond had said that many private care companies were having to stave off financial difficulties in the current climate.

She said: "They've got to balance a desire, and I think most of them do have a very strong desire to provide good quality care, with their ability to balance the books.

"That shouldn't be a conundrum they have to face, but unfortunately with the state of social care as it is, that's what they do face."

The meeting was told that just over three quarters of Wakefield's care providers were rated 'good' or 'outstanding', despite several being subject to negative reports from the care watchdog in recent times.

Council officers also said that there were far more care home places in the district than is actually needed.

That contrasts with the situation in neighbouring Leeds, where around a fifth of providers were said to be at risk of collapse last summer. Around 83 per cent of the city's care home places were occupied before the Covid pandemic.

Several councillors on the committee described how their relatives had had poor experiences in residential homes, with Coun Rowley saying the care her late mum received at one venue was "up and down", before it was later graded inadequate.

She said: "I used to write in and have meetings with the management, but I was never informed of what the inspection (by the watchdog) consisted of or what problems there were."

Describing how she'd only found out from local media that the home had been placed in special measures, she added: "I think families need to know more."

In response, Ms Esmond said: "I totally agree with you that that's a real difficulty.

"There are the Care Quality Commission (CQC) reports and they go into a lot of detail, but they are only a snapshot in time.

"Homes don't get inspected very frequently so unless families are visiting and spending a lot of time there, which isn't always possible, it's difficult to understand what the quality of the home is."

Local Democracy Reporting Service