Social care charity invests millions to boost wages

Social care charity Community Integrated Care, has unveiled a landmark £5m investment in employee pay, reward and wellbeing, including a new basic hourly rate for its Support Workers of £9.70 per hour in England and £10.20 in Scotland.

The comprehensive three-year employee investment strategy is aimed at rewarding, recognising and retaining its 5,000 strong workforce, as well as responding to the unprecedented recruitment challenges being faced by providers across the sector.

In addition to a 9% pay rise (England), this new financial package also gives staff double-time for Christmas bank holidays and a brand-new wellbeing offering, including flexible working options such as a four-day week, and free mental health support in partnership with wellbeing app, Everymind At Work.

The move means that a Support Worker in England working 40 hours per week will now receive an annual salary of £20,200 – an additional £1,600 (gross) per year.

Earlier this year, the charity commissioned a piece of ground-breaking research by Korn Ferry, the world’s leading experts in job evaluations, to independently assess the role of frontline Support Workers. In their published report – ‘Unfair to Care: understanding the social care pay gap and how to close it’ – Community Integrated Care demonstrated that based on the complexity, responsibility, skill and demands of the role, many social care workers are undervalued by around £7,000 a year in comparison to their counterparts in other public funded sectors[1].

The charity has used their report, and its findings, as a platform to raise awareness of the true value of the 1.6 million people working in care and to lobby the Government to deliver fundamental workforce reform and funding.

Following their announcement, the charity has today launched a national recruitment campaign: www.WorkInCare.co.uk where prospective employees can apply for a variety of roles and receive these new rates of pay. For more information visit the website or call 0800 112 4843.

Mark Adams, chief executive officer at Community Integrated Care said: ‘In 2018 we embarked upon our ‘We Dare’ organisational strategy, which aimed to put Community Integrated Care at the forefront of quality, social impact, and workforce standards in our sector. From the outset, a fundamental goal was to provide fairer pay and a better career for people working in care.”

‘We are proud to be making such enormous strides towards the realisation of this vision. Through years of hard work, innovation and focus from colleagues at all levels of our charity, we have built strong foundations that have enabled us to make this unprecedented uplift in colleague pay.”

‘We recognise though that our charity, and every care provider, has untapped potential and that colleagues working in social care deserve further investment. This can only be realised through central government commitment to better investment and an effective workforce strategy for the sector. Social care is experiencing a funding and recruitment crisis, and successes like this must not mask the clear threat that many providers are facing or the constraints that all organisations are operating within.’

Teresa Exelby, chief people officer at Community Integrated Care added: ‘This is by far the biggest investment in colleagues our charity has ever seen, but it’s something that we know is absolutely justified and needed. Our workforce has continued to deliver the best lives possible for the people we support throughout the toughest of circumstances, and it’s time their pay reflected this.

‘Current figures show that our sector is losing 34% of its workforce every year, with 112,000 vacancies and 8.2% of roles in care are currently unfilled. Recruitment and retention have always been challenging, but what we are seeing now is on an unprecedented scale. We hope that our now industry-leading pay rate will help us retain our own incredible people and support us to attract new talent – encouraging people from other sectors to consider a great career in care.’

Photo Credit – Community Integrated Care