Isle Of Wight Care Sector "Close To Falling Off Cliff", Warns Councillor

The Isle of Wight's care sector is "one step away from falling off the cliff", the council's health and social care lead has warned.

Councillor Karl Love says healthcare worker shortages on the Island are at a "critical" level.

He blames low wages, mainland local authorities offering better pay rates, a shortage of rental properties and - what he calls - decades of austerity.

He's warned that without urgent extra funding, the Island may have to ask for help from the military or "other intervention services".

"We can see the cliff edge looming. My job in adult social care is to stop us falling over that cliff. It's about where we draw the line", Cllr Love told Isle of Wight Radio.

"I'm not just going to walk off the cliff edge. We have to deal with the problem and the problem is we cannot recruit.

"Therefore if we cannot recruit then we have to look at all solutions and possibilities. And one of those is, at what point do we cross the line and ask for Government support?

"This is not a floating bridge where we can stick our heads in the sand and pretend that it's not happening and keep claiming that we can fix it. We're talking about people's lives here."

Cllr Love says the Island is unique in that it has the highest percentage of residents aged over 80 in the country, and a very small workforce.

He says mainland councils can rely on neighbouring authorities for help, but the Island cannot do the same because of expensive travel costs.

Cllr Love says tens of millions of pounds worth of central government funding is needed to address the crisis. He also wants changes to the national minimum wage. 

He said:

"Government needs to recognise the important role of carers. They can do this by introducing a minimum wage for care staff across the UK.

"Government has granted a 1% increase within council tax rises for adult social care in 22/23.

"This does not come anywhere close to the realities of increasing costs, financial uplift and increasing usage of adult social care social service facilities. We need significant funding for adult social care alone in the region of 10,000,000+ and this needs to be on an annual basis"

Cllr Love has also called on a change to migration rules.

"We need to make immigration easier from the EU and other overseas states because by doing that, it allows some additional workforce to come into the UK, he said.

"Our Government is not making that process easy and we’ve got to sort out our territorial border issues."

While he welcomes talk of an Island Deal, Cllr Love says help is needed now, not in a few years time.

The Department of Health and Social Care says it is "committed to the delivery of world leading health and social care across the whole of the UK."

It has pledged to invest an additional £5.4 billion into the sector over three years.