Social Care charity with Sheffield services announces £3 Million investment into support worker's pay

The social care charity has said it will now pay its frontline support workers £10 per hour in England from April 1 2022.

This is the second uplift in pay in six months from Community Integrated Pay, which will see the charity, which has a 5,000 strong workforce, pay more than both the Government’s National Living Wage and Voluntary Real Living Wage.

In Autumn 2021, the charity also spent £5 Million on improving employee pay, reward and wellbeing, and this further investment of £3 Million into employee pay reflects the charity’s commitment to frontline recognition under its new Best Lives Possible five-year strategy.

They hope that the rise in pay will help to alleviate its workers’ concerns amid the looming cost-of-living crisis.

This industry leading rate of pay means that a frontline support worker in England working for the charity will receive a boost of an extra £625 per year when working 40 hours a week.

The charity’s advanced support worker roles and nurses will also see equivalent uplifts in pay.

Chief Executive Officer at Community Integrated Care, Mark Adams, said: “As the social care sector continues its battle with low pay and skills shortages, our charity is proud to be in a position where we can go some way in fulfilling our commitment to valuing and rewarding our colleagues fairly for the outstanding work they do.

"But we know that for many providers, this is an impossibility, tightly bound by the Government’s funding constraints and a recruitment crisis that is buckling our sector. Whilst short-term tweaks such as scrapping mandatory vaccination and easing immigration, may make headlines, latest figures show that vacancies rose from 9.4 per cent to 9.5 per cent between December 2021 and January 2022 – highlighting that this crisis is neither slowing, or going.

Teresa Exelby, Chief People Officer at Community Integrated Care, commented: “Whilst we know there’s no quick fix to these issues, we hope that this £3 million investment goes some small way in making daily life easier for our teams, demonstrating our commitment to making our Best Lives Possible strategy a reality for not only the people we support, but our colleagues too.”