Public interest

• In England, the vacancy rate in the adult social care workforce for 2022-2023 was 9.9%.
• Experts underline that staffing and financing were problems in the care sector well before COVID arrived in March 2020.
• The pandemic exacerbated this crisis, despite the extra £2.1 billion in emergency government support, provided during the first year.
• Of the care workers we spoke to, 42% are in financial distress related to having worked in care homes during the pandemic.

Care workers in dire straits

• We conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with 43 care home staff, including workers and managers.
• We found that most of the £2.1 billion in government aid went to covering care homes’ loss of revenue resulting from decreasing occupancy.
• In the first two years of the pandemic, 1,290 care workers (including those working in domiciliary settings) died as a result of COVID-19.
• Of the care workers we surveyed, 80% reported working more hours during the pandemic, typically doing 12-hour shifts, as opposed to the seven to eight-hour norm.
• Taking on extra hours actually put some workers at a financial disadvantage because it reduced their eligibility for in-work benefits.

A defective funding model

• It highlighted the demise, since 2011, of two major providers, Southern Cross and Four Seasons, which housed 45,000 elderly people between them.
• Our findings confirm that the complex funding model on which the care home sector is based is unsustainable.
• For the most part, however, two things kept care homes afloat in the first year of the pandemic.
• Our [staff] turnover rate has gone up to about 33%, and we had it down at about 18% before the pandemic.
• Our [staff] turnover rate has gone up to about 33%, and we had it down at about 18% before the pandemic.

Marianna Fotaki receives funding from UK Research and Innovation COVID Scheme Derya Ozdemir Kaya does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Secure Document Generation SaaS vendor Inkit has hired Former Army Comptroller Jonathan Moak as its federal sales lead.
• ST. PAUL, Minn., Sept. 14, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Inkit , a Secure Document Generation (SDG) Software-as-a-Service company, announced that it has hired Jonathan Moak, former acting Comptroller of the U.S. Army as its Senior Vice President of Federal Sales.
• Moak brings two decades of military and federal government experience to the role, including stints as a Department of Army Civilian, a management consultant at Deloitte Consulting, and as the acting Assistant Secretary of the Army for Financial Management & Comptroller.
• Moak also worked closely with federal clientele as a Vice President in the Public Sector at Salesforce.

• Green Onion offers an easy-to-use, comprehensive solution that informs school food professionals of ingredients of concern highlighted in the Ingredient Guide for Better School Food Purchasing and provides better product alternatives.
• "We want all children to live healthier, happier lives and that starts with the food they eat," said Megan Flynn, MPH, RD Life Time Foundation Nutrition Program Manager.
• This allows Green Onion to receive real time product data directly from K-12 suppliers, ensuring reliable information is available to all school food professionals nationwide.
• This makes it a truly unique and indispensable tool for every school nutrition program across the country," Dr. Wilson added.

• The United Kingdom air purifiers market is expected to witness robust growth during the forecast year owing to the increasing number of cases of airborne diseases and rapidly increasing pollution levels in several cities of the country.
• An air purifier ensures the filtering of indoor air in a closed environment, which captures and delivers clean air.
• With the rise in air pollution in different cities of the United Kingdom, the government has set up several laws to bring down the increasing air pollution level in the country.
• In this report, the United Kingdom air purifiers market has been segmented into the following categories, in addition to the industry trends, which have also been detailed below:
  United Kingdom Air Purifier Market, by Filter Type: