Responding to the Care Minister’s Statement on Adult Social Care Workforce, including the scrapping the Adult Social Care Training and Development Fund previously propoposed, Dr Rhidian Hughes, Chief Executive of the Voluntary Organisations Disability Group (VODG) says:
‘Millions of disabled people who draw on care and support rely on our valued care workforce to lead independent and fulfilling lives. Now more than ever we need to recognise and reward the role our essential workers play in society, including investment in their training and development.
‘We need investment in funding to directly enhance pay and to continue to develop the workforce to improve quality and outcomes for people who use care and support services. The need for these urgent improvements is at odds with the government’s recent decisions about social care in its early days. This latest decision to cull the adult social care training and development fund, risks coming back to bite given the scale of the workforce challenges facing the country.
‘The new government’s ambition to secure fair pay for the social care workforce is welcome. However, for the millions of disabled people who rely on the state to fund care and support these costs have, and always will be, incurred by statutory services. Any fair pay agreement resulting in increased pay must be exactly matched with an increase in central government funding to cover workforce costs. There are no two ways about it.’