Social care system seeing 900 workers quit daily

New figures reveal that over 900 adult social care workers a day quit their job in England last year, representing a collapse in the system.

Despite the government investing an extra £2 billion into social care, Mike Padgham, the chair of the UK Homecare Association has claimed that the adult social care system has begun to collapse, emphasising that his ‘biggest fear is that we will soon run out of capacity to provide care to those who cannot fund themselves’.

Analysing data from Skills for Care, the BBC has reported that an estimated 338,520 adult social care workers left their roles in 2015-16, equalling 928 people leaving their job every day. Furthermore, 60 per cent of those leaving a job left working in the adult social care sector altogether, contributing to a staff turnover rate of 27 per cent.

Its also found that there was an estimated shortage of 84,320 care workers in 2015-16, meaning around one in every 20 care roles remained vacant. With one in every four social care workers employed on a zero hours contract, the BBC highlighted that the average yearly salary of a care worker was £14,800.