'Deeply unhelpful': Immigration policy impacts on care staff
The Council's City Administration Committee was meeting to discuss an uplift in pay for social care staff and the challenges of securing and holding onto staff was raised.
Chris Cunningham, Convenor for Health, Care and Caring and Older People, highlighted the issues that affect staffing.
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He said: 'There are two issues on staff retention. First and most challenging is pay. If pay is not competitive, there are clearly issues.
'The second is terms and conditions, the environment in which staff operate.'
He hinted towards the Prime Minister's recent speech and immigration white paper designed to reduce net migration, which has caused controversy
He added:'Clearly, staffing issues in this area as well are significant in terms of recruitment from overseas and have been the case since Brexit.
'It is disappointing to see the trend and actions relating to immigration in recent years and far more recently.
'It is deeply unhelpful when there are people who wish to work in the UK and we require their skills.'
The meeting heard that funding of £138.1m has been made available for local councils for an increase of the minimum hourly rate for workers providing direct social care, within commissioned services and those funded from Direct Payments, from at least £12.00 to £12.60 per hour from April 2025.
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The council proposed to again increase Social Care providers in Glasgow Purchased Services by a 5% uplift in line with typical full workforce costs for Social Care.
Pat Togher, HSCP chief officer, also said there was an issue with staff retention.
He said: 'The HSCP wants to minimise the attrition rate in the organisation.'
He said the HSCP has around 17,000 staff and the attrition rate occurs 'more often than not in areas of lower pay, in care homes and care home providers.'
Mr Togher added: We are working very hard on this.'
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