![\"Getty](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/eed4\/live\/347836b0-fb7e-11f0-bbb4-c5bf37339933.jpg.webp\")
Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\nGiving evidence to Stormont’s Health Committee on Tuesday, Shepherd said she hoped the issues could be addressed and “we can get back to the constructive relationship we had”.<\/p>\n She added that workers had been left “demoralised and demotivated”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There are approximately 24,000 independent care home and home care (domiciliary) staff in Northern Ireland, about 11,500 of those work in care homes.<\/p>\n The social care workforce is the lowest paid across the health and social care system.<\/p>\n Staff deliver more than 80% of social care in Northern Ireland, mainly domiciliary services at home and within care facilities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Shepherd told MLAs that residential and care homes had capacity to accommodate those elderly patients currently stuck in hospitals who were medically fit but without social care packages.<\/p>\n She said there was “unused capacity, even during peak times”, but this was not being used by health trusts because of budgets and outdated investment models.<\/p>\n A home care package averaged \u00a338 a day, a care home bed \u00a3128 a day and a hospital bed a minimum of \u00a3800 a day, which was a false economy, she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Ryan Williams, from care provider Connected Health, told the committee that the decision not to pay the Real Living Wage to staff had “exacerbated the problem” over retaining staff.<\/p>\n “The breach of trust that we had in terms of this was that carers doing the same job inside the (NHS) system did get a pay award, and carers outside the system didn’t,” he said.<\/p>\n “That kind of betrayal probably hurt us more than anything else, in that we weren’t valued in the same way, and that’s why carers just went: ‘Look, I have had enough of this profession’.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n‘Unused capacity’<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
‘We weren’t valued in the same way’ <\/h2>\n<\/p>\n