Mark Adams featured on BBC Breakfast

Community Integrated Care’s CEO, Mark Adams, was featured on BBC Breakfast today (Tuesday 15^th February 2022), discussing the Government’s decision to add care workers to the Shortage Occupation List.

Interviewed live in the studio by BBC presenters, Nina Warhurst and Jon Kay, Mark was keen to explain the realities of this move and called for the Government to create a solution to the workforce crisis in the social care sector.

The piece also featured Community Integrated Care’s Griffin Lodge, an Independent Living service in Stockport, that supports 12 people with learning disabilities, autism and complex needs in the community.

Karen Loxton, Service Leader at Griffin Lodge, spoke to BBC Breakfast about the current recruitment issues in the sector, how she manages these challenges on the frontline, and the effects they are having on our colleagues, the people we support and our services as a whole.

Mark Adams, commented, “At a time when the UK social care sector is engulfed in the biggest recruitment crisis in its history, we welcome any opportunity to attract committed, values-led care workers into the sector. However, we should be under no illusion – today’s change is not the silver bullet to ‘fix’ this crisis. Whilst we’re pleased to see the Government finally concede that care workers play a skilled role in society, the reality is, for most providers, this change will have little or no effect.

To qualify for a health and social care visa, workers have to be earning a minimum salary of £20,480 or £10.10 an hour. Even when the National Minimum Wage rises from £8.91 to £9.50 from April, the vast majority of frontline care workers simply won’t meet this threshold.

If the Government truly want a high-skilled, high wage economy, then salaries have to reflect the professional standards required to deliver quality care, and local authorities must be funded by central Government to pay for this. What we need to see now is fundamental change across the whole sector, creating a clear vision for how we will bolster our domestic talent pool with proper pay, funding and training, rather than a focus on short-term tweaks to plaster over the cracks.”

BBC Breakfast has an average daily reach of 5.7 million and over 10 million regular viewers per week.

You can watch the full feature by clicking here.