Talks with independent care workers paused since pay deal 'U-turn'

Independent social care providers say they have stopped talking to the health minister since his "U-turn" on paying their staff the Real Living Wage.

In November 2025, Mike Nesbitt announced doctors, nurses, and auxiliary staff would be given pay parity with colleagues in other parts of the UK, but the offer did not include care workers in the independent sector.

Pauline Shepherd, chief executive of the Independent Health Care Providers (IHCP), has said discussions with the Department of Health (DoH) have been "paused" since then.

The DoH said the minister remained committed to funding a Real Living Wage for those staff and has committed to making this a priority for budget planning for 26/27.

Giving 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".

She added that workers had been left "demoralised and demotivated".

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.

The social care workforce is the lowest paid across the health and social care system.

Staff deliver more than 80% of social care in Northern Ireland, mainly domiciliary services at home and within care facilities.

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.

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was "unused capacity, even during peak times", but this was not being used by health trusts because of budgets and outdated investment models.

A home care package averaged £38 a day, a care home bed £128 a day and a hospital bed a minimum of £800 a day, which was a false economy, she said.

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.

"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.

"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'."