{"id":15925,"date":"2018-08-10T15:19:36","date_gmt":"2018-08-10T14:19:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=15925"},"modified":"2020-11-12T12:58:18","modified_gmt":"2020-11-12T12:58:18","slug":"figures-labour-agency-staff-dependence-nhs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=15925","title":{"rendered":"‘Short-sighted decisions’"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Some temporary agency workers have been found to be working for the NHS for more than a decade at a time, in the process wasting limited health service resources, new research has found.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A series of Freedom of Information (FoI) requests from the Labour Party found that trusts have been using agency staff \u00e2\u20ac\u201c who are substantially more expensive than permanent workers — for months and in many cases years on end even though their use is supposed to be limited as a stop-gap measure to address staff shortages.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Since 2012-2013, the NHS has spent nearly \u00c2\u014117bn on agency staff, which amounts to \u00c2\u01412.3bn each year.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Of the 129 trusts which responded to the FoI requests, one trust had at least 3700 agency workers working for longer than a year, including 628 doctors and 2347 nurses. The same trust had 6887 staff on agency contracts working for over six months and 11762 staff on agency contracts for over three months.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Seven trusts said they had more than 100 staff on year-long agency contracts, while three trusts said the equivalent of more than 10 per cent of their workforce were on three-month agency contracts.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Most shockingly of all, it was revealed that an ambulance trust had employed a worker on continuous agency shifts for 157 months \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or 13 years. Another mental health trust reported employing an agency worker for 126 months, or more than 10 years.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

19 trusts revealed they had employed at least one staff member on an agency contract for longer than five years.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nursing vacancies<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Labour\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s research is published just as the massive staffing crisis in nursing has been laid bare. Figures from the NHS out last month showed that vacancies for nurses and midwives have increased by a fifth<\/a> at the end of last year compared to two years before \u00e2\u20ac\u201c in 2017, there were more than 133,660 vacant posts.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As the number of vacancies has risen, the number of applications over the same time period has dropped by more than 12 per cent.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Labour\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s shadow health minister Justin Madders said that it was the government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u015bdisastrous inability to plan the NHS workforce has left patients with dangerously understaffed services and left hospitals to rely on expensive agency solutions instead.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bShort sighted decisions including the pay cap and cuts to training and bursaries have in the long term ended up costing the NHS billions as hospitals pay thousands of pounds a day to staffing agencies for cover,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he added.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThis reliance on agency workers is unsettling for hospitals and causing uncertainty for patients who see their continuity of care disrupted. What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more there is a big human impact for staff who are expected to carry out unpredictable shifts, often at short notice for months on end.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIt should be a priority for the new Health Secretary to sort this out but instead we know that a workforce strategy has been repeatedly delayed and in fact Theresa May decided to leave health education out of her long term funding deal for the NHS.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe government must bring forward a sustainable, long term workforce plan that gets enough permanent staff in place to deliver safe services for patients.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Flexible working<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Unite national officer for health Colenzo Jarrett-Thorpe agreed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe NHS will only wean itself off its dependence on agency staff solutions if it properly invests in its workforce,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bHealth workers go on to work for agencies often because of the flexibility it affords. We have to remember that 75 per cent of the NHS workforce are women, many of whom tend have caring duties so introducing genuine flexible working arrangements would go a long way in retaining NHS workers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bDespite the recent pay offer, NHS workers have suffered a decade of real-terms erosion of their pay. If we want to attract more people into nursing and other health professions we must ensure that wages increase substantially in the coming years to undo the pay freeze damage and to reflect the value of these jobs that are critical to the health of the nation, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bhe added. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bScrapping nursing bursaries was a massively misguided decision by this Tory government that has only further exacerbated the staffing crisis \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a decision that should be reversed immediately.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jarrett-Thorpe went on to highlight the implications Brexit would have on the NHS staffing crisis.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bA substantial proportion of the NHS workforce is from the EU, and research has shown that since the referendum, many EU health workers have left the UK,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he noted. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bConfusion over regularising present EU nationals\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 status as UK residents as Brexit approaches will mean this exodus will likely continue, while fewer new EU migrants will come to the UK post-Brexit as well.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe staffing crisis that forces the NHS to rely on agency staff is purely of the government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own making \u00e2\u20ac\u201c eight years of the Tories smashing the NHS will require many, many years to repair. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s simply no quick fix solution at this stage but we can start with long-term workforce planning and investment.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some temporary agency workers have been found to be working for the NHS for more than a decade at a time, in the process wasting limited health service resources, new research has found.   A series of Freedom of Information (FoI) requests from the Labour Party found that trusts have been using agency staff \u00e2\u20ac\u201c […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4358,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[534,29,75],"wps_subtitle":"Shock figures show massive scale of NHS agency staff dependence","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15925"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15925"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25974,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15925\/revisions\/25974"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}