HEALTH and Social Services spending on adult services shot up £4.8m last year – mostly because of staff costs.
And without a one-off payment from the UK for the treatment of UK visitors to Guernsey, the department would almost certainly have gone over budget last year.
The States accounts reveal that expenditure in the adult services area was £46,065,435 last year – an inflation-busting 12% increase on 2007.
‘The vast majority of this increase was in relation to staff costs where, due to the high level of vacancies experienced during 2008, the department had to make extensive use of agency and locum staff to ensure that services were safely delivered, particularly within the Princess Elizabeth and Castel Hospitals,’ the report in the accounts said.
An agency nurse costs an average of two-and-a-half to three times as much as a member of the employed staff.
Staff turnover across the department was 17% during the year, compared to 16.5% in 2007.
‘Owing to high turnover, particularly in permanent specialist nursing staff, and the difficulties in recruiting replacement social workers and medical staff experienced in 2008, the department overspent its budget on overtime and agency/locum staff costs. This was essential to ensure that critical services continued to be provided.’
Overtime and casual staff were also used to help cover shortages.
These ‘serious’ staffing problems led to off-island recruitment campaigns.
‘An international recruitment trip has been planned for late 2009, despite the significant costs to the department of such initiatives.’
The department’s minister, Hunter Adam, warned at the last States meeting that it would need an extra £8m. next year on its indicative budget just to stand still.
It underspent its total authorised budget for the year by 1%, primarily because of a one-off payment secured from the UK for the treatment of UK visitors to Guernsey.
The statement in the accounts warned that because of underlying cost pressures had this payment not been secured the department would almost certainly have overspent in 2008.
Income in services for adults was better than previous years, mainly because of private patient income from Victoria Wing at the PEH and increased charging for non-contract procedures like bariatric [weight-loss] surgery.
Article posted on 6th July, 2009 - 11.30am
6 Article Comments
Sadly for all of us as taxpayers, this is a pretty accurate article.
We aren’t able to find enough qualified staff locally to cover these unfilled posts, and even by going to the UK and offering moving costs and a 2 year rent allowance we haven’t been able to get enough non-local staff.
There’s probably a multi-factorial explanation for this: a combination of pay, high living costs, our housing restrictions, working conditions, and a lack of willingness of health staff to abandon safe and steady careers to come over to Guernsey for a short term job.
All very frustrating, because the bill for this is shared by all of us – not to mention the inconvenience and risks you run when you have a service with missing staff or partially run by locums.
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James
A good post.
Can you help by saying whether or not specific training of local staff for jobs where shortages might occur, would have done any good?
After all we boast about the training in HSSD. Does this mean that training is in the soft administrative areas and not where it is needed?
Think of all the money the taxpayer pours into the training in the public sector, and still we have to import truckloads of essential workers.
Something wrong somewhere.
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SJ
There are locals trained in all aspects (not enough mind) but, as soon as they can, a large percentage leave due to several of the factors that James mentions. Mainly that the wages in health tend not to give a living wage (i.e. when you can afford to live here – whether that be due to low wages or high cost of living is irrelevant), unless you are in senior management or higher that is.
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Agreed, great comment James.
As a healthcare student I was having this very conversation only a few days ago as I justified my decision not to return to the Island when I graduate. Quite simply, on a starting salary of £20-23k pa, where am I going to go? A country like the UK or similar where £20k is enough to live on, or Guernsey where disproportionate salaries in finance has inflated the cost of living beyond the reach of those in my position?
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Training for qualified general nurses and mental health nurses is undertaken in Guernsey but I am sure they could get more nurses on each course. There seem to be about 20 on each course which has an intake every 18 months yet have lots of tutors compared to the UK! The good thing about Guernsey is nurse training earns a wage and they don’t have to rely on a bursary. They have to sign to work HSSD for 2 years after qualifying before they can leave or they have to pay back some costs incurred depending on length of service.
They pay is not good compared to the private sector and that is the main problem here. The locals are not entitled to any of the perks that licence holders get like cheap accommodation and moving costs which does not seem fair. I also think that there are no ‘perks’ – no healthcare insurance either which is a bit mad. A lot of locals move to private healthcare as it pays better or else they change jobs completely.
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Training on-island is available for nurses and has been for many years. As I understand it, they are willing to take anyone who meets the entry criteria. The cost per capita is pretty high because, in order to meet the standards required to certificate these courses, Guernsey has to provide pretty much the same facilities as a big UK training hospital so – cost effective? Who can say? What is important for the future though is that pay and benefits in the public sector need to be tailored to the recruitment needs of the service, not some arcane structure based on internal relativities. The opportunity afforded by the apparent demise of PSRC needs to be grabbed and a new era in public sector pay-setting brought in.
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