15 Apr 2025
Five years after the first Clap for Carers during the early days of the Covid pandemic, one St Albans home care provider has said that nothing has changed for the sector.
Abbots Care says that the number of calls that it has received to its Hertfordshire headquarters has risen by 66 per cent since March 2023.
CEO and founder Camille Leovold said: “We have an ageing population and an increased life expectancy, along with a rising number of adults with disabilities as more people with severe disabilities survive childhood.
“But we have known that this is the trend for some time and, since I co-founded Abbots Care three decades ago, there have been nine Prime Ministers, all of whom have been told by the care sector that we are facing a crisis.
“In the past 24 months our calls have increased from roughly 4500 a week in 2023 to 7,500 a week. This is unsustainable without some real Government support.
“It is five years since the first Clap for Carers in the pandemic and I cannot believe that the UK care sector is in the same desperate situation it was then, and nothing has changed.
“The sector urgently requires substantial funding to ensure its sustainability and to continue providing essential services to those in need. Government intervention is crucial to address the financial instability and rising costs, thereby safeguarding the future of care services in the UK. The Government needs to act now, and not keep pushing it down the road.”
The company has also received 54 per cent more private client enquiries in the past year than the year before (2023). These are enquiries coming into the company directly from local residents, rather than via the county council.
This comes as a recent report has revealed that help requests to Hertfordshire’s adult care services have risen by 18 per cent compared to previous years.
This report was discussed at a meeting of Herts County Council’s adult care, health and wellbeing committee in February. Chris Badger, the council’s executive director of adult care services, told councillors that this reflects “an unprecedented increase in demand for our services”.
Abbots Care is rapidly creating more jobs to meet this growth in demand.
Camille added: “The need for home social care has exploded over the past couple of years. We have recently brought on 45 more care workers to support our growth. That’s roughly an extra 1,400 hours of care we will be able to provide each week.”
