[Doug]

Social care wages are ****e in a lot of areas, best I can offer staff is £5.90 per hour plus fuel allowance, that comes out of hourly £10.50 service rate. Some Preferred Providers are paying £6 but not many. Some of the biggest agencies up here are pay £5.55 and no fuel allowence on a £11.38 & £12.00 hourly services rate. They could pay a lot more but don't see why they should and this leads to poor retention rates in the industry at a time when we have a massive short fall of viable candidates.