Care home staff often worked extra hours without extra pay during the pandemic, new research has found.
A study by Warwick Business School has found that public money used to support care homes was withdrawn too soon and was not sufficiently focused on staff.
Most (60%) care homes were already “financially fragile” as the pandemic hit in March 2020 but larger companies were still able to profit and pay additional amounts to shareholders, the study of the accounts of more than 4,000 care home companies showed.
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The report, co-written with University College London and the Centre for Health and the Public Interest think tank, said the government had failed to plan for highly predictable damage to the sector’s financial viability during a pandemic.
Not all of the money for care homes reached the front lines and most of the payments ended in 2022, the report authors stated. As a result, some staff worked more hours but lost income, as extra hours meant less in benefits and hourly pay did not typically rise.
Yet, in the first year of the pandemic, 122 larger, for-profit care home companies had paid shareholders 11% more in dividends than the previous year, the research found.
At smaller care homes staff gave up their private lives to keep residents safe. One care home worker told the study she had lived in the care home for three weeks and was then doing long shifts every single day for four weeks.
The report concludes: “The decision by government to end financial support for care home companies after the peak of the pandemic had passed has likely contributed to the current financial and operational difficulties experienced by the sector.”
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It states the financial plight of many staff and the immense pressure they were under “means it is not surprising the care home sector has struggled to both recruit and retain staff once lockdown restrictions were removed and the wider economy re-opened”.
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