Cllr Nurullah Turan

A BURNT-out care worker has told how he is giving up the profession after being left relying on food banks himself.

Patrick Quinn, 56, said he had decided to switch to working at a restaurant after 20 years of employment in care homes across Islington and Camden.

“After working for 12 or 13 hours and then doing your commute home you’re tired. Then you’re tired on your day off because you’re stressed,” he told the Tribune. “You don’t have a life nowadays in care. I’m burnt out.”

Mr Quinn was speaking amid a wider row over how much the government is spending on adult social care – the term for services relied on by vulnerable users who are elderly, have disabilities or suffer from mental ill health.

Mr Quinn said: “The average pay is about £11 per hour, and some of the charities will give you a meal if you work a full day which helps. Many people I work with are contracted full time in one place, but they work elsewhere as well to earn extra money.”

Mr Quinn warned that care homes are chronically understaffed.

“If the chef phones in sick, you have to step up and sort out breakfast at least. [If you’re short staffed], you need to give the most time to someone who is really ill,” he said.

“But it takes time to do personal care with someone, and while you’re doing it, you might find something else is wrong and have to figure that out, so your time with other patients is limited.”

He added: “When the Care Quality Commission walks into a care home, we go ‘oh my god’ because we don’t know what they’re going to find. I’m leaving because of how bad the conditions are. I’m 56 and I want a life.”

Islington’s executive member for health and social care, Labour councillor Nurullah Turan, warned that services were at “breaking point” as the borough was millions of pounds short on funding­.

In a white paper in 2021, the government pledged £500million to “transform the social care workforce”, but the Department of Health and Social Care announced last week that it will provide £250million for the workforce.

Cllr Turan is now calling for the government to increase funding to these services.

He anticipated that costs for adult social care in Islington to increase by £3.3million this year.

“That’s how much we need just to be able to offer the minimum,” he said.

“We budget for the year based on these predictions, but then we have to make savings to balance the books.

“It’s pushing it to the breaking point. If you provide social care, then you might have to make a cut elsewhere.”

Cllr Turan warned the borough’s population is ageing and demand for care is going up, but that “current funding makes it difficult to reach the requirements of care”.

Mr Quinn’s decision to leave the profession is not unique, according to staffing statistics.

Last year the number of vacancies for social care workers in Islington increased by 121 per cent.

Staff turnover is at 27 per cent, with around a quarter of care workers in the borough on zero-hour contracts, which is almost 50 per cent less than the national average.

Cllr Turan said that the council has a policy against zero-hour contracts but cannot always enforce this when third party providers are giving care.

Responding to funding criticisms, the Conservative care minister Helen Whately said: “We are not taking any money away from social care. All the money that is allocated for social care is going into social care. We made a historic commitment to social care at the autumn statement, up to £7.5billion is going into social care.”