Every Thirty Minutes – violence in the health and social care sector
A health and social care worker is assaulted every 30 minutes in the UK. Sadly, this shocking statistic (from the Labour Force Survey) only begins to illustrate the scale of risk and pressure that health and social care workers face. Read on to learn more about the care crisis going on right now and how you can help spread awareness.
With our #Every30Minutes campaign, we want to bring a much-deserved spotlight to the daily risks of working in the care industry and to talk about what can be done to make the sector safer. We’ll be talking to leaders in the field, as well as frontline workers, and we are encouraging workers across the UK to share their stories.
Want to tell your story or have questions about safety in health and social care?
What are the risks?
Health and social care workers suffer some of the highest rates of workplace violence in the UK. Violence can come from a vulnerable person the worker is looking after, or from a patient’s relative. What sort of attacks are these? –To quote carehome.co.uk, “Kicking, hair pulling, biting, swearing, hitting and spitting are not uncommon occurrences”. According to a 12-month survey by Community Care, 85% of social workers experience assault, harassment or verbal abuse.
Beyond violence, health and social care has a higher number of workplace ill health incidents than any other sector (as of November 2020) –including musculoskeletal disorders and contact dermatitis. In part, this is because the health and social care sector is a massive source of employment in the UK, but even when measured per capita, the rates of workplace ill health are significantly higher than average.
Of course, workers have recently faced even greater challenges in the wake of the coronavirus epidemic. As of the start of September, over 7,000 health workers around the world have died from COVID19, according to Amnesty International.
Mental health and wellness
Unsurprisingly this level of physical risk, paired with tough working conditions, also takes its toll on the mental health of many care workers. According to a recent survey by The Office Group, health and social care has been rated as the most stressful industry to work in.
Furthermore, a 2020 report from the Health and Safety Executive shows that a significantly high number of health and social workers suffer from stress, depression or anxiety. The main psychosocial risks reported related to difficult customers (85%) and time pressure (49%).
Pay and Job Security
Unfortunately, a higher risk to physical and mental health is not reflected in the average pay of health and social care workers. In fact, according to IPPR, over 500,000 workers in social care – and half of all care workers – are paid below the real living wage.
Furthermore, despite most staff working longer than average weeks, a quarter of social care workers and a third of care workers are on zero-hours contracts –which, according to the Financial Times, leads to a greater risk of burnout, psychological stress, financial worry and absenteeism.
Effects on the industry
Put together, you can understand why there is currently a 30% turnover in this sector, with 1/3 of adult social care workers planning on quitting their job in the next five years.
The loss of talented and hard-working staff would be an issue in any industry, but this is particularly true of health and social care –which is already drastically understaffed. What’s more, this problem is only growing. As of 2018, there is a shortage of 110,000 workers in the sector. That is set to increase to 400,000 by 2028.
Sadder still, this deficit affects the quality of care for vulnerable people. We already know that 1.5 million older people don’t have access to the care and support that they need and that shortcomings in the system have led to an increasing amount of people struggling to work, make hospital appointments, or even meet basic needs like eating, washing, leaving the house, and going to the toilet.
What this all means
We have seen how violent and abusive working conditions, paired with long hours, and low-quality employment is leaving health and care workers stressed, injured and burnt out. Furthermore, we have also seen how this is causing talented and well-meaning individuals to leave a sector that is going through a staffing crisis.
Not all issues facing health and social care workers can be attributed to violent behaviour, and many organisations such as Age UK are asking for more to be done on the care crisis. However, we are running the #Every30Minutes campaign to bring focus to the abysmal rates of workplace violence affecting this sector, and to ask how we can better protect health and social care workers from violent attacks. We believe everyone deserves to go to work feeling safe and supported and that the physical and mental wellbeing of our vital frontline workers must be addressed.
If you currently work in health and social care or have left the profession, we would love to hear your stories. You can share on twitter using the hashtag #Every30Minutes, or you can contact us directly on info@safepointapp.com.
About Safepoint
We started Safepoint to protect health and social care workers, and other people who work in dangerous or remote jobs. Workers use our app and wearable devices to stay connected to their team and to our 24/7 monitoring service, who will react if a worker requests emergency help, or is unresponsive.