Ministers seek volunteer social care army to speed up hospital discharges

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Health ministers are to recruit a new volunteer army for social care to ferry medical equipment and drugs to people’s homes in a bid to free up congested hospital wards.

Volunteers will also be sent to, though not into, people’s homes to tackle loneliness and carry out shopping and other errands.

Under the plan, members of the public will be able to sign up on the GoodSam app for roles such as “check in and chat”, which involves support over the phone for people struggling with loneliness.

There will also be the chance to “pick up and deliver”, helping to transport medicines or small items of medical equipment to people’s homes from NHS sites so they can be discharged from hospital, and “community response” roles will involve collecting and delivering shopping and prescriptions.

The joint NHS and social care volunteers responders programme for England is being launched on Wednesday amid a social care staffing crisis with 165,000 vacancies and millions of hours of care needs not being met. At the end of April, 49,000 people every day had to stay in NHS hospitals in England despite no longer meeting the criteria to be there.

News of the planned announcement from the care minister, Helen Whately, has sparked concern among workers in the sector, who warned that volunteering could not solve the social care recruitment and retention crisis. Helen Wildbore, director of Care Rights UK, which represents relatives and residents, said it “feels like a desperate measure to try and save a system that is crumbling”.

But Whately said the volunteering plan was separate to government proposals to strengthen the care workforce and that volunteers would not replace paid staff who carry out skilled personal care. The social care scheme is an extension to an existing NHS volunteers scheme.

The move comes after the government announced in March that it would halve a ?500m planned investment in the social care workforce in England, in a move unions attacked as “a huge step backwards”.

“Volunteering was fantastically successful during the pandemic,” Whately said. “We had thousands of people signing up and thousands of people volunteering. There’s a relaunch of the NHS responders [volunteering scheme] and then we’re adding social care on to it as well … Care homes and social care providers will also be able to assess and draw on volunteers.”

She said a reason for delays in discharging patients from hospital was “people waiting for a long time for their prescriptions or medicines to come home”.

For people trapped in hospital and wanting to get home “rather than sitting in a hospital bed until everything’s ready, you can be discharged and then in parallel [the medicines and equipment will be arranged by volunteers]”.

Council directors of adult social care said in spring 2022 that almost 170,000 hours a week of home care could not be delivered because of a shortage of care workers.

Whately also wants to send volunteers into care homes. Care home inspectors frequently find staff so busy that they have no time for social contact with residents, leaving many lonely and isolated and in some cases suffering unsafe, inadequate care.

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The announcement sparked concern among care workers who are clamouring for a boost to pay and training. Karolina Gerlich, executive director of the Care Workers Charity, said: “I don’t think it is a solution to the social care recruitment and retention crisis.”

Moving equipment from hospitals can be logistically complicated and using volunteers “could be more trouble than it solves”, she said.

“We can’t replace care workers in social care with volunteers and we shouldn’t be trying to do so because the work is so skilled,” she said. “I am worried this is potentially going to mean we won’t have to look at addressing the vacancies in social care because we have this volunteer scheme and I am concerned the government still doesn’t understand the skill of a care worker.”

Jane Townson, director of the Homecare Association, said boosting volunteering was not a bad idea but added: “Will it solve the workforce crisis? Highly unlikely. We need a workforce plan for social care [from the government] which we haven’t got. And we need decent investment over 10 years.”

Wildbore said the volunteers would be “just a drop in the ocean in terms of the crisis that has been caused by years of under funding”.