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NEWS RELEASE FROM
THE REGISTERED NURSING HOME ASSOCIATION
Issued 2nd December 2002
EXTRA £1 BILLION FOR NHS PAY BRINGS
CALL FROM NURSING HOMES FOR EQUAL
TREATMENT FROM THE GOVERNMENT
Health Secretary Alan Milburn’s announcement that £5.16 an hour (equivalent to £10,100 a year) is to be the minimum wage paid to anyone working in the NHS has been greeted with a ‘What about our staff? response from the leaders of the UK’s nursing homes.
The Registered Nursing Home Association (RNHA) today accused the Government of double standards. Nursing homes, the RNHA claimed, were receiving such a low rate of fees for the care they provide to State-funded patients that they are forced to keep their pay rates close to the national minimum wage of £4.20 an hour. Yet the Government itself acknowledges that around two thirds of long-term care is provided by the independent sector.
With significant increases in pay now agreed for NHS care assistants and nurses over the next three years, the RNHA expects nursing homes to struggle even more to recruit and retain the staff they need to deliver the necessary quality of care.
Even before the Health Secretary’s announcement about the latest NHS pay deal, independent nursing homes were having a hard time. Over the past three years, pay rates for nurses in the NHS have exceeded the rate of inflation while the fees paid to nursing homes - and therefore the pay levels they can afford - have not kept pace.
Research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has already highlighted a £1 billion shortfall between the amount paid by local authorities for the patients they place in independent nursing homes and the amount it actually costs to look after those patients.
This calculation assumes that, on average, nursing homes are able to pay care assistants without NVQ level 2 qualifications a wage of £4.50 an hour, with those who have this or a higher qualification receiving £5.00 an hour. Both figures would still be somewhat behind the new NHS rates.”
Commented RNHA chief executive officer Frank Ursell: “ The fact that the pay gap between nursing homes and the NHS is set to get much bigger does not bode well, unless the Government adopts an even-handed approach which enables local authorities to pay realistic fees to nursing homes in the future.
He added: Mr Milburn takes pride in the fact that, by 2005/06, his Department will be pumping in an extra £1 billion a year to meet the rising NHS pay bill. That is precisely the same amount of money which, according to independent analysts, we in the long-term care sector need simply in order to meet our current cost commitments.
If we were to aspire to pay the same minimum wage as the NHS - and why shouldn’t we? - then we would need at least a further £1.25 billion just to plug the existing shortfall.”
Nursing homes across the United Kingdom are pressing local authorities for average increases in fees of between £75 and £85 per week for their State-funded patients. This is against a background of mounting numbers of nursing home closures as operators find they cannot afford to continue making substantial losses.
Local authorities are themselves set to increase the minimum rate for their own care assistants to £5.38 an hour from next April. As the RNHA points out, this will make jobs in council-run residential care facilities, as well as in the NHS, more attractive than the equivalent jobs in nursing homes.
Said Mr Ursell: “The Government is constantly sending out mixed signals to the private sector about its role in the delivery of long-term care to older people and others with special needs. The latest message, as signalled through the wage rises promised for NHS workers, is that those who work in our sector are second-class citizens who don’t matter.”
He concluded: “The Government and local authorities are restricting the fees they are willing to pay us, and therefore the wages we can afford to pay our staff. At the same time, they are significantly increasing pay rates for their own staff. This gives them a stranglehold over the future of the nursing home sector. The way things are going, we shall be squeezed slowly but surely out of the equation, either by deliberate intent or by sheer incompetence and complacency.”
END
For further information and comment please contact:
Frank Ursell, Chief Executive Officer, Registered Nursing Home Association
Tel: 0121-454 2511 or 07785 227000 mobile
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