What Happens If A Care Home Doesn’t Have Enough Staff?

What Happens If A Care Home Doesn’t Have Enough Staff?

Running & staffing a Care Home can be an immensely difficult job, and it involves some tight margins at times. If you’re a manager running the risk of going short-staffed – obviously don’t! It isn’t worth the risk. But if you are in that situation, this blog will go over your options.

What Happens If A Care Home Doesn’t Have Enough Staff? Going Short-Staffed

As a Home Manager, it might be tempting to go short-staffed for a period, or trying to get an off-duty staff member to come in. There are definitely some benefits to this:

• It’s cheaper than getting agency workers in to cover.
• It’s less effort (for management, at least).

However, this isn’t ideal for the staff who did make it in. They’ll be overworked, stressed, and feeling pretty hard-done-by. This leads to low motivation, an increase in stress-related illness, and poor staff retention. All of these mean even more absences and staff shortages!

What’s more, you’ve got your residents’ wellbeing to consider. The minimum staffing levels your Home has set itself are in place for a reason – if there was an emergency at the Home, or with some of your residents, and you didn’t have enough staff (or staff with the correct skills) to effectively respond – it’d be a disaster.

What Happens If A Care Home Doesn’t Have Enough Staff? If The CQC Finds Out

Obviously, there’s the CQC to consider. There is no legal ratio of staff to residents, the CQC determines what’s necessary on a case-by-case basis. You can read more about that on our blog: How Many Care Staff Per Resident Are Required in Residential Homes in the UK?

However, if the CQC determines that you have been dangerously understaffing your Home, they’ll penalise you in their inspections. Penalties can include:

• Official warnings, requiring an action plan to be implemented.
• Preventing the Home from accepting new residents.
• Closing down the home.

What Happens If A Care Home Doesn’t Have Enough Staff? Use An Agency!

The best thing to do if you’re short-staffed at the Home is to get in a temporary agency worker to cover the shifts – and we aren’t just saying this because we’re a nursing agency! It wouldn’t be a viable business model if it wasn’t such a useful, effective service.

No matter how short-notice you need the staff, we’ll get someone in to help. In fact, short-notice shifts are our speciality here at Medilink Nursing.

Visit our Services Page to find out what we can do to help you if you’re ever short-staffed at the Home.

Summary: What Happens If A Care Home Doesn’t Have Enough Staff?

If your Home doesn’t have enough staff, going short-staffed shouldn’t be an option you resort to. The safest, and most effective way to deal with short-staffing is to call a nursing agency to arrange cover. All you have to do is get in touch, tell them what you need, and they will sort out the rest. Much better than putting your current staff under pressure by having them cover for others!

If you’d like to make a booking with Medilink Nursing – an agency that specialises in last-minute cover – feel free to get in touch on 0113 877 6383 or email care@medilinknursing.com and we’ll arrange the rest.

Our Operations Team are manning the phones from 6:00am to 10:30pm, perfect for out-of-hours emergencies. Good luck with the rota!