Nationwide polling for the Guardian found that nine out of 10 older people believe there are not enough care staff, and half have lost confidence in the standard of care homes since the start of the Covid19 pandemic.
The survey, conducted by Ipsos this month, follows a doubling in public dissatisfaction in the NHS and exposes deepening fears about the fitness of a social care sector that had its weaknesses exposed by Covid, which claimed 36,000 lives in care homes in England alone.
More than 165,000 adult social care jobs remain vacant, including more than one in 10 care worker posts.
The Guardian has revealed how, last year, nearly £2bn in taxpayers' money was spent on places in below-standard care homes in England, many of which are deemed "not safe" by the regulator, while some private operators have been earning millions of pounds in profits.
The slump in confidence comes as Oonagh Smyth, the chief executive of the government-funded Skills for Care agency, urged ministers to create an NHS-style workforce strategy and said that for the first time since gathering data, the social care workforce shrank by 3% last year.
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