Teresa Exelby shares Unfair To Care on Sky News

Community Integrated Care’s Chief People Officer, Teresa Exelby, featured on Sky News on New Year’s Day, discussing the Archbishop of Canterbury’s New Year’s message on social care, and sharing our charity’s Unfair To Care report.

In his New Year’s message – which was broadcast on BBC One on Sunday 31st December – The Most Reverend Justin Welby shared his support for the social care sector and urged the government to act. He said, “Good carers are wonderful people to be valued.”

He continued, “We know our care system is broken, but it doesn’t have to be. We can rise to the challenge of fixing it. That means action from all of us: you, me, families, communities, government.”

Interviewed live on Sky News the following day, our charity’s Chief People Officer, Teresa Exelby, supported his call for the government to take action and shared insights from our Unfair To Care report.

Teresa commented, “[The Archbishop of Canterbury] has echoed many of the points we raised in our recent research, Unfair To Care, where we highlighted that people working in social care receive on average £8,000 less than their equivalents in the NHS for doing work that is of the same complexity and accountability. We’ve made a tiny improvement over the last four years, at an average of 1.5% a year, but if we continue at that rate, it would be 23 years before our social care workforce are paid the equivalent to their peers in the NHS.”

“We are a sector in crisis. We have 165,000 vacancies, up by more than 50% over the course of a year. As social care providers we are very ambitious about what we want to achieve for the people we support. But the constant churn of staff and work required on recruitment and retention zaps energy from us and so many providers in the sector – when we really want to spend all our time and energy on the people we support and creating the best lives we possibly can.”

“We need to make sure there is an immediate increase in pay for people working in social care. The government absolutely needs to look at the NHS Agenda for Change bands and look to replicate within social care, as we are partners in the same system and without balance there will never be stability, and the government also needs to create a far-reaching workforce plan, so that social care becomes a career of aspiration – which is absolutely what it should be.”

You can watch the full feature here: