Social care staff have been worst hit by long Covid among occupational groups in the UK, figures have revealed.

An estimated 5.47% of sector staff reported long Covid symptoms in the four weeks up to 4 December 2022, having first had suspected or confirmed Covid-19 12 weeks previously, showed data from the Office for National Statistics.

This was higher than the figures for healthcare (4.58%), the civil service or local government (4.46%) and teaching and education (4.12%).

The findings will add to concerns about the state of the adult social care workforce, with vacancies having increased by 52% in England in 2021-22. The ONS has previously found that people were less likely to participate in the labour market after developing long Covid symptoms than before they were infected with the virus. This impact was greatest among those aged 50 and over; the average age of adult social care staff in England was 45 as of March 2022.

The latest data also showed long Covid was significantly more prevalent among disabled than non-disabled people, with 10.07% of those whose activity was limited a lot, and 7.27% whose activity was limited a little, by health conditions, compared with 2.01% of those with no health conditions.

Across all groups, fatigue was the most common symptom of long Covid (reported by 71% of those with symptoms), followed by difficulty concentrating (49%), shortness of breath (47%) and muscle ache (46%).

The survey covered people living in private households, excluding those in care homes.

Social workers’ wellbeing at work is lower than that of other health and social care staff groups, in the wake of Covid, research has found.

The profession’s quality of working life has also fallen further than nurses’, midwives’, social care workers’ and allied health professionals’ during the pandemic, found the latest and fifth round of an ongoing study into Covid’s impact on health and care staff. The majority of the 1,737 respondents to the UK-wide survey from May to July 2022, as well as of the 380 social workers who completed the research, worked in Northern Ireland.

As in previous rounds, the health and social care workers’ survey assessed respondents’ quality of life using the Work-Related Quality of Life (WRQOL) scale. This asks professionals how far they agree with a series of statements on career satisfaction, stress at work, general wellbeing, home-work interface, control at work and working conditions.

Social work is the only profession whose score has declined in each successive round and wellbeing at work for the profession has now fallen below that of midwives, which had the lowest score in phases two, three and four.

Source: Health and social care workers’ quality of working life and coping while working during the COVID-19 pandemic (phase 5 report)

Social workers more burnt out

Social workers were also more burnt out than was the case during the phase 4 study, which ran from November 2021 to February 2022, on a scale of 0-100, based on how exhausted they felt personally, in relation to work and in relation to their work with clients.

Personal burnout rose from 65.08 to 66.94, work-related burnout from 63.45 to 67.03 and client-related burnout from 32.90 to 35.76. The latter two were the highest of any profession in the phase 5 research.

Across the five phases of the research, there had been a decrease in social workers’ propensity to use positive coping strategies for burnout – such as positive reframing and acceptance – and an increase in their use of negative strategies, such as self-blame, venting and behavioural disengagement.

The study also assessed professionals’ overall wellbeing, finding that, though social workers’ was not as low as midwives’, it had declined since phase 4. This measured practitioners’ responses to questions on how optimistic, useful, relaxed and close to other people they felt, how clearly they were thinking, and how able they were to make up their minds and deal with problems.

Source: Health and social care workers’ quality of working life and coping while working during the COVID-19 pandemic (phase 5 report)

One in five social workers working entirely from home

Researchers found that social workers had been particularly affected by the reduction in contacts with colleagues, in the context of remote working during the pandemic.

The study found that 18.5% were still entirely from home at the time of the phase 5 research this summer. This follows concerns voiced by Ofsted about the impact of ongoing remote working in England on the availability of peer support and the quality of practice.

Social workers’ struggles appeared to be having an impact on retention, with 58.5% of study respondents reporting they had considered changing their employer, and 40% changing their occupation altogether, during the course of the pandemic.

About a quarter of social workers said they had considered changing their occupation because of the impact of their job on their health and wellbeing, with a further 10% attributing this to job-related stress.

‘Worrying trends’ show need to boost pay and conditions

“These are worrying trends,” said the phase 5 report. “It is worrying because of the very real risk of mental and physical health problems developing among many members of this workforce. It is also worrying because this level of job dissatisfaction might lead to even higher staff turnover, with many leaving their health and social care work for less stressful or more fulfilling (or higher paying) jobs in other sectors.

“Our evidence shows that the health and social care workforce is already hard to replace with insufficient applicants, and this trend will affect the quality and availability of services in health and social care for years to come,” it added.

Researchers concluded that their results showed the need for employers to invest in improving pay, recognition and working conditions for staff, particularly in the context of the mounting cost of living crisis.

In response to the study, Noeleen Higgins, professional officer for British Association of Social Workers Northern Ireland, said the results reflected both the “significant pressure” social workers were under pre-pandemic, and the exacerbating impact of higher client need and less peer support as a result of Covid and lockdowns.

Social work vacancy rate ‘masks true extent of problem’

While the social work vacancy rate in Northern Ireland stood at 7.9% at the end of June, down from 9.6% at the end of March, Higgins said this “masks the true extent of the problem in critical areas of service provision”.

She said BASW had heard of there being vacancy rates of up to 50% in some children’s teams, amid rising demand, and a “heavy reliance” on agency staff was having a negative impact on service users.

Higgins added: “It is also deeply concerning that social workers are working without adequate support and carrying often unmanageable workloads, no doubt contributing to the finding that more than half have considered leaving their employer.”

She also said that home working posed “a significant threat to the relationship-based practices that social work has traditionally relied upon”, creating difficulties for practitioners due to a lack of resources and team support, and the blurring of boundaries between working and home life.

‘Need for safe staffing legislation’

Higgins urged employers to provide staff with support services to deal with stress and said there needed to be safe staffing legislation across Northern Ireland “to ensure social work services are provided in a manner that upholds the best interests of the individuals and families who use services, and those of the social workers who deliver them”.

A spokesperson for the Northern Ireland Social Care Council, which regulates social workers in the country, said: “The pandemic undeniably gave an unprecedented challenge for the health and social care sector, which included the social work and social care workforce.”

They said innovations put in place during the pandemic to help practitioners in the role “will be of long-term benefit to the profession”.

The spokesperson added: “We are engaging with social workers and social work employers about the challenges that the post-pandemic era presents, including understanding how supports for social workers can be further enhanced.”

Health and social care workers’ quality of working life and coping while working during the COVID-19 pandemic: findings from a UK survey & focus groups phase 5 report was published in September 2022. Author and funding information can be found in the report.

Story updated 15 July 2022

Social workers temporarily registered to bolster the workforce in England and Wales during the pandemic will have to cease practising – or rejoin the register proper – by 30 September.

The Department of Health and Social Care announced the move today in its latest update on the implementation of the Coronavirus Act 2020, under which temporary registration of formerly registered social workers was introduced in England and Wales in March 2020.

In England, this was automatically applied to about 8,000 practitioners who had left the register over the previous two years.

They were then supplemented by those who voluntarily left the register up to December 2020, or were removed in November of that year following the annual renewal process.

In November 2021, Social Work England began removing the temporary registration of those who had left the full register more than two years previously, as a public protection measure, given that the group are not subject to any pre-registration checks.

6,500 temporarily registered social workers

This has left about 6,500 practitioners temporarily registered in England, meaning they are able to practise without being liable for the £90 annual registration fee or requirements to carry out continuing professional development.

Despite the increasing pressures on the workforce as a result of Covid, surveys have found that only a small number of this group are in practice.

A spokesperson for Social Work England said it would be writing to all temporarily registered social workers, asking them to apply to restore their registration if they want to continue practising after 30 September – at a cost of £135.

“This can be done on our website where there is full information and guidance,” the spokesperson added.

The DHSC, in its update on the Coronavirus Act, said employers would otherwise need to make alternative appointments if they needed to fill roles currently undertaken by temporarily registered staff.

In Wales, a different approach was taken, with social workers who had left the register in the three years preceding the Coronavirus Act being able to opt in to temporary registration.

Since March, when the provisions governing temporary registration in England and Wales expired, no one has been able to join the Welsh temporary register. Those already on it have been allowed to continue in practice but there have been efforts to move them to the permanent register where possible.

The Welsh Government will also be closing temporary registration on 30 September.

The government unlawfully failed to consider the spread of Covid-19 from people without symptoms admitted to care homes in policies issued in the early stages of the pandemic.

That was the verdict of the High Court last week as it upheld part of a judicial review claim brought by the daughters of two men who were among about 20,000 care home residents who died of Covid in the pandemic’s first wave in 2020.

The claim centred on the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and Public Health England’s (PHE) approach to preventing transmission of Covid within care homes, particularly from newly admitted residents discharged from hospital.

Drive to clear hospital beds

This was in the context of the DHSC’s drive to rapidly free up 15,000 acute hospital beds in the second half of March 2020 in order to protect NHS capacity as Covid’s first wave took hold. This was set out in guidance issued to NHS leaders on 17 March and 19 March (“the March Discharge Policy”).

The claimants – Cathy Gardner and Fay Harris – criticised the policy for failing to provide for the testing of patients before admission to care homes and for not making admission conditional on homes being able to provide safe care.

They also criticised DHSC and PHE guidance on care home admissions, issued on 2 April 2020 (“the April Admissions Guidance”), for not requiring negative tests before admission and for providing for care to be delivered as normal to asymptomatic people and Covid-positive residents no longer displaying symptoms.

Both, they said, prioritised freeing up hospital beds over protecting the safety of care home residents, and did not take account of evidence at the time on asymptomatic transmission of Covid.

‘Understandable’ concern regarding NHS capacity

Giving judgment, Lord Justice Bean accepted that the DHSC and PHE were “extremely and understandably concerned” about the prospect of NHS intensive care capacity being “overwhelmed”, as had happened at the time in Italy.

It was “unrealistic” to provide for care home admissions to be conditional on providers’ ability to deliver safe care, and “hopeless” for each discharged patient to be tested pre-admission, given testing capacity at the time.

However, the judge said that those drafting the March Discharge Policy and the April Admissions Guidance “simply failed to take into account the highly relevant consideration of the risk to elderly and vulnerable residents from asymptomatic transmission”.

Though there was no scientific proof at the time that asymptomatic transmission was occurring, predominant academic and expert opinion at the time was that it was possible.

‘Very serious consequences’

“Ministers were obliged to weigh up not just the likelihood that non-symptomatic transmission was occurring, but also the very serious consequences if it did so,” said Lord Justice Bean. “Non-symptomatic transmission would mean that one elderly patient moved from hospital to a care home could infect other residents before manifesting symptoms or even without ever manifesting symptoms.”

This should have involved providing for mandatory isolation of new residents to care homes for up to 14 days, as far as practicable.

Though the government introduced mandatory isolation of new care home residents in late April, the evidence ought to have prompted a change in policy earlier, the judgment concluded.

The government’s failure to set this out in the March Discharge Policy and April Admissions Guidance was unlawful, on grounds of irrationality, it found.

Human rights claims rejected

The court threw out most aspects of the claim, which Cathy Gardner and Fay Harris brought in relation to their fathers, Michael Gibson and Donald Harris, who died in care homes of Covid, on 3 April and 1 May 2020, respectively.

This included that the two men’s rights to life and to family life under the European Convention on Human Rights had been breached.

The court also rejected claims of unlawfulness against two other policies – Public Health England guidance on residential care issued on 13 March 2020, and the government’s action plan for adult social care published on 15 April 2020.

‘Uncertain evidence’

In response to the judgment, a government spokesperson said: “Our thoughts are with all those who lost loved ones during the pandemic…This was a wide ranging claim and the vast majority of the judgment found in the government’s favour.

“The court recognised this was a very difficult decision at the start of the pandemic, evidence on asymptomatic transmission was extremely uncertain and we had to act immediately to protect the NHS to prevent it from being overwhelmed.

“The court recognised we did all we could to increase testing capacity. We acknowledge the judge’s comments on assessing the risks of asymptomatic transmission and our guidance on isolation and will respond in more detail in due course.”

Social care leaders have voiced concerns over the ending of Covid-19 funding for the sector.

Funding to help care providers fund infection control and Covid testing, and for the NHS to fund free care for up to four weeks for people discharged from hospital with support needs, ended on 31 March, as did winter resources to help providers recruit and retain staff in the face of mounting pressures.

Though the resources were always designed to be time-limited, social care bodies warned their removal carried significant risks for a fragile sector at the height of the latest Covid-19 wave.

‘Adding further pressures to underfunded sector’

A Local Government Association spokesperson said: “The loss of funding streams for social care puts councils and providers onto an even more unstable footing and highlights how volatile the financial situation is within social care. This will only add further pressures to an underfunded sector.

“This pandemic is not over, social care staff continue to do their utmost to keep those who draw on social care safe with limited resources. Ensuring that care providers and councils have the staff and capacity to handle hospital discharges is crucial to ensure people get the right care at the right time, and to freeing up NHS time and space. With less funding this becomes harder and harder to deliver.”

The Homecare Association raised particular concerns about the ending of the infection control and testing fund, which was designed to enable providers to pay care staff off sick or forced to self-isolate and enable care homes to boost staffing levels in order to minimise movement between homes, in order to control transmission of the virus.

“Lack of available infection control funding risks care workers being unable to afford to isolate when Covid-19 positive, particularly as cost of living is escalating,” said chief executive officer Dr Jane Townson.

“We are hearing from providers who currently have up to 30% of their workforce off sick, and therefore unable to provide care for older and disabled people in the community. Workers only become eligible for Statutory Sick Pay after three days, and infection control funding is essential to help providers pay staff as close to a full wage as possible while isolating. Most local authority fee rates for homecare are inadequate to cover normal costs of homecare delivery never mind additional costs due to Covid-19.”

It called on the government to reinstate the funding, which has been worth £1.35bn to adult social care since May 2020, with a further £288m allocated for testing.

Vacancies ‘eye-wateringly high’

From a staff perspective, UNISON voiced similar warnings.

“Scrapping the financial support for sick pay in care, just as the devasting cost-of-living crisis intensifies and Covid rates rise, is negligent and morally wrong,” said head of social care Gavin Edwards.

“With care job vacancies already eye-wateringly high, the government should be encouraging and rewarding staff for doing the right thing by isolating, not making it impossible for them to put food on the table. Workers are already turning to food banks as budgets are stretched to breaking point.

“Ministers must immediately reinstate the infection control fund and make it mandatory for care employers to pay proper sick pay. Anything less will drive more staff out of the sector and put lives and livelihoods at risk.”

The government has published updated guidance on infection control and prevention in adult social care, a supplement to which states staff should stay off work if they test positive for Covid-19 or have any of the core systems (a new continuous cough, a high temperature or a loss or change in their sense of taste or smell). They should only return following two negative lateral flow tests on consecutive days, at least five days after they tested positive or developed symptoms.

Care homes should not normally have to limit movement between homes but may be asked to by the local director of public health or health protection team if there is high prevalence of Covid-19 locally or an outbreak in a home.

End to discharge funding

Though the national discharge fund – worth almost £3bn over the past two years – has been channeled through the NHS, it was designed to fund free care for people who left hospital with needs. This was designed to speed up discharges using the discharge-to-assess approach, under which people’s ongoing care and support needs are assessed after leaving hospital, ideally in their own home.

In a letter to health and social care leaders last month, NHS England and NHS Improvement (NHSE/I) encouraged them to continue the arrangements for free care using other funding streams, such as the Better Care Fund. The BCF is designed to promote health and social care integration, fund out-of-hospital care and improve hospital discharge, with the NHS being required to put £4.26bn into local pooled funds in 2021-22.

However, in the letter, NHSE/I director of community health Matthew Winn admitted post-discharge capacity may reduce in some areas.

“It is understood that in some areas capacity for post-discharge services may decrease; however, local discharge arrangements have matured in many areas, and we would encourage local systems to continue to embed discharge to assess approaches where affordable within core local funding, with the national Hospital Discharge Programme continuing to provide guidance and implementation support to systems.”

The Department of Health and Social Care has produced revised guidance on hospital discharge, which said it was up to local health and social care leaders to “agree the discharge models that best meet local needs that are affordable within existing budgets”.

It added: “Where local areas agree to fund a period of care (pending a long-term needs assessment being carried out), agreements should be in place to ensure no one is left without care or – if needed – an assessment of long-term needs prior to the end of this period. This should also ensure that no carers are left without adequate support or an assessment of their longer-term needs (if needed) at the end of this period.”

The social care sector today honours the more than 900 staff who lost their lives to Covid-19.

Twenty one sector bodies have organised a day of remembrance and reflection to pay tribute to social care workers who died from the disease during the course of the pandemic.

Workforce development body Skills for Care said an estimated 922 social care workers died from Covid between the start of the pandemic and May 2021.

It said today was “a day when we can say a simple thank you to all those social care workers who provided care and support during these tough times, for us all to reflect on what everybody working together has achieved, and to pay tribute to those we have sadly lost”.

Sector leaders, including care minister Gillian Keegan, British Association of Social Workers England director Maris Stratulis, National Care Association chair Nadra Ahmed and Homecare Association chief executive Jane Townson will address a memorial event this morning, at which a memorial poem will be read.

The organisers have set up an online memorial wall to enable people to pay tribute to care workers who have died from Covid, along with a thank you wall, on which people can post messages of gratitude for social care’s role during the pandemic. Both are hosted on the Care Workers’ Charity website.

‘A catalyst for change’

UNISON general secretary Christina McAnea said the day should be a catalyst for change for social care workers, in the context of low pay and “chronic staffing shortages”.

“It’s important everyone remembers and pays their respects. But the best tribute to those who died would be to fix the broken social care system.

“Most care staff are still paid less than the real living wage, frequently do extra shifts because of chronic staffing shortages and get no sick pay.

“This memorial day should be a catalyst for changing social care into a high-quality service. Care should be provided by well-supported workers who’re paid fairly and treated like human beings, not numbers on a spreadsheet.”

Rising cases and funding concerns

The day comes with rising Covid case numbers and hospital admissions causing concern among sector heads.

The 7-day average of cases in the UK rose from 33,500 on 25 February to 62,236 on 8 March, while the 7-day average of hospital admissions increased from 1,140 on 20 February to 1,578 on 9 March – though the number of patients on ventilators and deaths from Covid are still falling.

Norfolk council executive director of adult social services James Bullion, who paid tribute to staff who had lost their lives at today’s event, separately expressed concerns about the rising case numbers and their impact on social care on Twitter earlier this week.

Very high rises in C19 cases in 2 weeks. 40% home closed, doubled people is hosp, and social care capacity short by 10000 hours per week. Need to remember in social care that COVID restrictions not over. We all need to slow the spread amongst people at risk. @NorfolkASSD @1adass

— James Bullion (@JamesBullion) March 15, 2022

There are also concerns about the planned ending, on 31 March, of funding designed to help adult social care manage the impact of Covid and wider pressures. These include:

• The infection control and testing fund, worth £388m from October 2021 to March 2022, and designed to fund measures to enable providers to finance testing of staff and visitors and reduce the spread of infection, including by paying care workers while self-isolating and limiting staff movement between care homes.
• The £462.5m in funding to help providers recruit and retain staff, also allocated from October 2021 to March 2022.
• The £478m allocated to fund support for people discharged from hospital, including social care, over the same period.

Independent care providers’ body Care England said this week that the government urgently needed to confirm whether funding would be continuing into the new financial year so that organisations can plan their services and to support fee negotiations with council and NHS commissioners.

‘An enormity of financial and emotional challenges’

Chief executive Martin Green warned about the impact of stopping the funds: “If the Covid-19 support funds are to end, along with the discontinuation of free asymptomatic testing for residents, staff and visitors, care providers will face an enormity of financial and emotional challenges which can be avoided by government intervention.

“Care home occupancy levels are still 5-10% below pre-pandemic levels, [and] workforce attrition and vacancies remain over 30% and 10%, respectively, causing a further devastating financial burden onto already stretched care home providers.”

Story updated 16 March 2022

Temporarily registered social workers are being urged to restore their full registration to stay in practice with the government expected to end provisions enabling them to work in the near future.

Social Work England and the Local Government Association called on those of the 6,353 temporarily registered professionals in England who wanted to stay in social work to apply to restore their registration in order to do so.

The parts of the Coronavirus Act enabling temporary registration of practitioners in England and Wales will expire at midnight on 24 March.

However, temporary registration will not end at this point, but when the UK and Welsh governments, respectively, declare the coronavirus emergency at an end.

14 days’ notice

This will give Social Work England and Social Care Wales 14 days’ notice to revoke the registration of all those temporarily permitted to practise – meaning practitioners will themselves be given two weeks’ notice at that point.

However, the UK government will give notice of the timing of the closure of the register to enable people to restore themselves to the full register if they wish to do so, suggesting there will be forewarning before the 14-day deadline is triggered in England.

A Social Work England spokesperson said: “We are liaising closely with the government to ensure that we are ready for temporary registration ending. Social workers will be given 14 days’ notice.

“It’s really important that everyone with temporary registration applies to restore if they wish to carry on practising. This can be done on our website. We wrote to everybody with temporary registration last [month] to remind them how to do this.”

David Fothergill, chair of the Local Government Association’s community wellbeing board, said: “As we recover from the pandemic, longer-term restoration to a full time, permanent register is important for social workers to maintain their high quality work with families and ensure continuity, to safeguard the safety and wellbeing of children and families.

“We would encourage anyone considering a career in social work, or who has previously worked in this role, to put themselves forward and help make a real difference in improving people’s lives.”

Restoring registration

To retore their registration, practitioners in England must provide, among other things, information on their employment since leaving the register and any previously undeclared health conditions that may affect their practice. They must also provide evidence of how they have updated their skills and knowledge if they left the register more than two years previously.

Restoration costs £135, after which practitioners must also provide the relevant share of the £9o annual registration fee for the remainder of the current registration year.

It is likely that only a small minority of the 6,353 temporarily registered social workers in England are in practice. A survey published in May last year, as part of a government’s review of the Coronavirus Act 2020, found only around 100 of 13,500 practitioners who were then temporarily registered were practising.

Also, a campaign, led by the LGA, to match temporarily registered social workers with employers needing extra capacity closed in September last year.

Omicron impact

However, it’s possible that numbers were boosted at the turn of the year when councils wrestled with the impact of the Omicron wave on workforce capacity. At the time, children’s minister Will Quince urged temporarily registered practitioners to return to practice to shore up services.

When temporary registration in England was introduced in March 2020, all those who had left the register since March 2018 were automatically opted in. They were then supplemented by those who voluntarily left the register up to December 2020, or were removed in November of that year following the annual renewal process.

In November 2021, Social Work England began removing the temporary registration of those who had left the full register more than two years previously, as a public protection measure, given that the group are not subject to any pre-registration checks.

They are also not charged the £90 annual registration fee. However, Social Work England can remove temporarily registered practitioners if concerns are raised without following standard fitness to practise procedures.

In Wales, a different approach was taken with social workers who had left the register in the three preceding years being able to opt in to temporary registration. As of December 2021, 79 were temporarily registered.

A Welsh Government spokesperson said: “The temporary register will close on 24 March 2022 to new applicants when the Coronavirus Act 2020 expires.

“However, existing registrants will still be able to remain on the register and to gain employment until the register is closed completely. Social Care Wales will be engaging with these registrants to offer them the option of moving to the permanent register over the coming weeks.”

Rising vacancies and turnover

The forthcoming removal of temporary registration comes with vacancies and turnover rising in both children’s and adults’ services in England.

In that context, and amid “consistently low” morale, Social Workers Union national organiser Carol Reid called for temporary registration to be extended.

She said: “It would make sense to consider extending this as part of a more flexible approach to recruitment to ensure a diverse and experienced workforce is able to return and remain in practice.”

However, the UK government’s view is that temporary registration was a response to the coronavirus emergency rather than a longer-term means of boosting the workforce.

by Linda Briheim-Crookall

Sometimes it is the things that do not happen that tell as much of a story as the things that do. In a report released last week, Coram Voice found that, during the Covid pandemic, care leavers’ wellbeing did not decline as might have been expected and, in some areas, improved slightly.

While there is no single explanation for this, our work with care leavers suggests that the additional support made available at this time made a difference to young people’s lives.

This  is a follow up to our ‘What Makes Life Good?’ report published in 2020, which analysed 1,800 care leavers’ views on their wellbeing, collected between 2017 and 2019 through our ‘Your Life Beyond Care’ survey. The survey was developed with care leavers as part of our ‘Bright Spots’ programme to capture what they felt made their lives good. It explored how young people felt about their relationships, where they lived, their finances, feelings and much more.

In our new report, we compare previous findings to responses from just under 2,500 care leavers who responded to the survey in the first year of the pandemic (2020-2021).

Our pre-pandemic analysis showed that care leavers did worse than young people in the general population on a range of measures. Care leavers were more likely to experience high anxiety, low life satisfaction loneliness and financial difficulties and were less likely to have friends and trusted supportive people in their lives.

Wellbeing maintained

In 2020-21, these higher levels of low wellbeing persisted but did not appear worsened by the pandemic. Levels of stress, anxiety, loneliness and life satisfaction all remained stable, and we saw a slight improvement in the proportion reporting that they were coping financially and had digital access.

Our own work and research from the University of Bedfordshire have shown that many local authorities put in place additional support for care leavers during this period. There were also national initiatives that supported care leavers financially and practically, including the uplift to universal credit and free laptops and internet access. There was national guidance that emphasised the importance of focusing on wellbeing and reports of more frequent contact with young people to check in and ensure they were all right.

While our research focused on how young people feel, not on the services that work with them, our findings could indicate that this increased focus on care leavers’ wellbeing may have prevented it from declining wellbeing and accounted for some of the slight improvements we saw. Care leavers’ own hard-won personal resilience may also explain the improvements.

One care leaver told us:

The support given to me recently from social services has been phenomenal, as due to Covid I lost my job and have been struggling to pay my bills ever since… I have little to no work and can’t claim universal credit, so without the help of social services I really don’t know what I would do.”

Critical support from personal advisers

As in our previous report, one of the positive findings from our work is the proportion of care leavers who report a positive relationship with their leaving care personal advisers (PAs). Four out of five young people trusted their workers all or most of the time. Our pre-pandemic analysis showed that care leavers were more likely to have had the same worker and report that they trusted their worker than children in care. During the pandemic, half of the care leavers surveyed reported that their PA provided them with emotional support.

“He has been really supportive throughout the Covid situation and was actually the first professional I saw face to face when I really needed support, which I was really grateful for,” one care leaver said.

This report shows that challenging times do not inevitably lead to a decline in wellbeing for care leavers. Investment in support can start to chip away at the gap between care leavers and their peers. It is now important that the gains made during the pandemic are not lost.

While the pandemic has highlighted the strengths of local authorities and practitioners in responding to the needs of care leavers in challenging times, the report also shows that there is still more to be done to improve wellbeing. We highlight, for instance, the need to continue to build services that foster the stability of leaving care workers and give them the time and support needed to develop trusting relationships with all the young people they support.

With the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care reporting this spring, there is an opportunity for the government to think about how they invest in care leavers. Our report suggests that helping care leavers to avoid financial and digital poverty as well as ensuring their leaving care workers provide regular emotional support should all be part of a systematic drive to make care leavers’ lives better.

Put another way, we need a society where the state steps up to be the best parent it can be, giving children in care and care leavers the same opportunities as other young people by supporting them emotionally, practically and financially.

Linda Briheim-Crookall is head of policy and practice at Coram Voice

The government will scrap mandatory Covid vaccination for health and social care staff, subject to consultation, health and social care secretary Sajid Javid said today.

The policy, requiring staff to be double jabbed, has been in place in care homes since November and, according to the government’s own estimates, has cost the workforce 40,000 staff.

It was due to come into force in other regulated social care settings – as well as across healthcare – in April, with the government estimating a loss of 35,000 home care staff.

Amid mounting calls from NHS and social care leaders for the policy to be scrapped, Javid said the government would do so, subject to a consultation, launched today.

He said the government was changing course because population immunity was higher than at the time the policy was introduced and the now dominant Omicron variant was less severe than the previous Delta strain of the coronavirus.

‘Greater population protection’

“When taken together with the first factor – that we now have greater population protection the evidence shows that the risk of presentation to emergency care or hospital admission with Omicron is approximately half of that for Delta,” he said.

Javid defended the policy’s impact to date, saying 22,000 care home staff and 10,000 home care workers had been vaccinated since September, when the government launched its consultation on extending compulsion to health and social care settings beyond care homes.

He also said that vaccination remained a “professional duty” for health and social care staff and that, in order to promote this, he had:

• Written to professional regulators across health asking them to review their guidance on vaccination with a view to emphasising the importance of getting jabbed against Covid.
• Asked the NHS to review staff policies on hiring staff and deploying existing workers, taking into account vaccination status.
• Asked Department of Health and Social Care officials to consult on reviewing its code of practice on the prevention and control of infections, which applies to all Care Quality Commission-registered providers, to strengthen Covid-19 requirements.

Deepening workforce gaps

Mandatory vaccination has been roundly condemned by social care provider and staff organisations for exacerbating already significant workforce gaps across the sector.

Vacancies across the sector rose from 9.2% to 9.4%, from November to December 2021, up from 6.1% in May, while the number of posts filled in services fell to 3.7% below March 2021 levels, according to data from Skills for Care. The situation is particularly bad in care homes where the number of filled posts among care workers has dipped by 6.1% since March last year.

Following Javid’s announcement today, provider body Care England tweeted that mandatory vaccination ad been imposed on care homes “without due consideration or support”.

Policy imposed on care home sector without due consideration or support. Unintended consequences staff leaving sector, some to NHS, exacerbating pre existing recruitment & retention challenges leading to disruption to the delivery of health & care services https://t.co/3cpYot2ciW

— Care England ? (@CareEngland) January 31, 2022

Story updated

Relationship-based practice and edge of care services are helping keep the number of children entering care below the long-term average, councils have said.

This was the most common explanation proffered by authorities in submitting data showing that care entry rates have continued to lag well behind the average for 2017-20 since the start of the pandemic.

The latest Department for Education survey on Covid’s effects on children’s social care showed the number of children entering care was 26% lower than the three-year average for the same period in September, 30% lower in October, 17% lower in November and 22% lower in December 2021.

The DfE said the survey underestimated the number of children starting to be looked after because some local authorities reported that there could be a delay in adding start dates to their management information systems.

However, official government statistics showed the number of children entering care from April 2020 to March 2021 down 8% on the previous year, in the wake of year-on-year declines from 2017-2020.

The fall since April 2020 has been associated with risks and harm to children being missed because of pandemic restrictions, though the latest falls reported by councils have come since the lifting of restrictions last summer.

Debate over causes of fewer children entering care

In an appearance at Community Care Live last October, chief social worker for children Isabelle Trowler questioned whether the fall was due to children’s services not recognising harm or of them supporting families differently.

The DfE’s survey report said the most common explanation councils gave for the latest fall in children starting to be looked was action to divert children from entering care.

Authorities quoted also cited the impact of relationship-based social work.

Investing in keeping families together

The Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) said many councils were investing in programmes to help families stay together where it is safe to do so.

“By working collaboratively and adopting relational approaches, we have seen many positive examples where children have been able to remain with their family,” said vice president Steve Crocker.

“For example, edge of care teams can work intensively with a family prior to entering care proceedings in order to provide them with the right support to overcome challenges and reduce risk.”

However, the DfE survey report said the number of children looked after in January 2022 was 3% higher than the same time in 2019-20.

Some authorities said their numbers in care were increasing because of court delays in discharging care orders and increases in the number of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, points echoed by Crocker.

He said greater national investment in children’s services was needed to help councils to continue to deal with these challenges.

“Despite the barriers and backlogs caused by the pandemic, we continue to work intensively with children and families to enable them to stay together safely,” he said.

“The government must provide the sector with a sustainable, equitable and long-term financial settlement that enables children to thrive, not just survive in the wake of the pandemic.”

The DfE is monitoring trends in children coming into care and said the issue was being considered by the children’s social care review, which is due to report later this year.

Referrals remain below pre-Covid levels

Local authorities received between 6% and 9% fewer referrals to their children’s social care services in October to December 2021, compared to three-year averages for the same periods in 2017-20.

These declines are not as sharp as the those of 20% or more recorded in January and February 2021, when strict Covid measures were in place.

But the continued lower trend indicates that referrals have not yet returned to pre-Covid levels, with reported concerns lagging 10% behind the three-year average over the course of the pandemic.

Some local authorities that responded to the survey predicted an increase in referrals because of the government’s ‘plan B’ measures to reduce the spread of the Omicron variant and the national media coverage of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson’s cases.

One said: “Over the next three months, we are anticipating an increase in referrals due to the new Covid-19 restrictions and the heightened media attention on children’s safeguarding and safety.”

Spike in Covid absences

The latest survey also shows there was a sharp rise this month in the number of local authorities with a high proportion of social workers absent due to Covid-19 illness, reflecting the impact of the Omicron variant.

More than a tenth of local authorities (11%) reported over 10% of their social workers were unable to work due to coronavirus at the start of January 2022.

This is the highest proportion since June 2020 and only lightly below the peak of 13% in May 2020, during the first wave, with no vaccines available.

One local authority responding to the survey said it was meeting twice weekly to review absences in its children’s services and agree contingency plans.

“We are building capacity of casual and agency staff within our children’s homes as a contingency to staff sickness and we are also maintaining some vacancies within the homes to allow flexibilities in staff allocation or indeed placements in an emergency,” it said.