Mike Padgham runs a group of care homes in North Yorkshire and chairs the Independent Care Group, which is an organisation that supports care providers in North and South Yorkshire.<\/p>\n
He said care costs varied but staffing was always the biggest expenditure, taking up about two thirds of the fee income.<\/p>\n
Of the \u00a31,465 a week, in LaingBuisson’s figures, \u00a3914 goes on staff wages, which includes domestic and catering staff, plus agency workers.<\/p>\n
“A massive part of the cost of a week’s care goes on keeping the care home running and paying the staff,” Padgham said.<\/p>\n
“We want to pay them better, but it involves some compromises further on if we’re going to do that.<\/p>\n
“In many care homes, staff are paid above the minimum wage, and I think that’s the right way to go.”<\/p>\n
Padgham said he believed privately-employed care workers should be paid “on a par” with NHS employees who do a similar job.<\/p>\n
But he said the “sums don’t add up” for independent care homes, as they provide care for clients referred by local authorities, who, Padgham claimed, don’t pay private providers “anywhere near what the true cost of care is”.<\/p>\n
“The private payers are subsidising the state to make things work,” Padgham said.<\/p>\n
Michael Harrison, North Yorkshire Council’s Conservative member for health and adult services, said the authority paid for “an awful lot” of care places in private homes.<\/p>\n
“They are a vital part of the sector,” Harrison said. <\/p>\n
“A lot of the money the council spends goes on buying a service from that independent sector. Some people pay for their own care needs, but for a lot of people the council has to fund it. <\/p>\n
“We absolutely need the independent sector to thrive and be sustainable. A lot of the money we spend is on buying care from the external market, and there is no one price across North Yorkshire.<\/p>\n
“We try as a council to be fair, to make sure we are prepared to pay a rate that is sustainable for the external care market, while at the same time needing to make sure we get good value for money.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mike Padgham runs a group of care homes in North Yorkshire and chairs the Independent Care Group, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-401373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}