Responding to the Liberal Democrat plan for free personal care to end the hospital crisis and help people stay in their own homes, Patricia Marquis, Executive Director of RCN England, said:
“Patients want and deserve care closer to home and investing in the social care sector is essential to delivering it. Under-resourced care services, without enough staff or funding, can’t meet the needs of a population with increasingly complex conditions. Left with no choice but to seek care elsewhere, they turn to already jam-packed hospitals. The result is vulnerable people lining corridors and a national emergency for patient safety.
"With over a hundred thousand care worker vacancies across the sector, any policy to improve personal care requires an equally ambitious, fully-funded long-term workforce plan. We also need to see pay and conditions improve in the sector, which lag behind the NHS in this regard.
"The RCN supports proposals for free personal care, but the plan’s ambitions rely on growing the nursing workforce responsible for its delivery. It therefore could be limited in its ability to improve these vital services.”
