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Caregiver in the retirement home
Photo: Peter Steffen / dpa
They were applauded and praised, but the burden of skilled workers in the care of the elderly and the sick is still great, even after more than a year of pandemic.
That emerges from the government's response to a small question from the Greens in the Bundestag.
In May 2021, 16,673 positions in the areas of health care and nursing or rehabilitation and obstetrics could not be filled - around 1000 more than in the same period of the previous year.
According to data from the Federal Employment Agency, there were around 2.2 registered jobs for every unemployed nurse.
A total of 20,000 positions in geriatric care could not be filled.
Around 7,000 of these were unskilled workers.
This means that there were around 3.5 registered jobs for one unemployed elderly care worker.
The data provide an outlook on the fact that the measures of the “Concerted Action Care”, which Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn launched together with other ministries, have so far only been moderately helpful for care workers in Germany.
The »Pflexit« remains off for the time being
The central association of health insurance companies GKV recently announced that one of Spahn's measures for a better personnel situation had so far hardly had any effect.
In the “immediate care program”, 13,000 new positions in care for the elderly were to be financed.
But only 3,000 of them have been occupied in the past two years
A so-called "Pflexit" - that is, a wave of dismissals by nursing staff - as initially feared during the corona crisis, the numbers do not confirm for the time being.
Between the beginning of April and the end of July 2020, around 9,000 people had turned their backs on the nursing profession.
Therefore, the number of elderly and nursing staff fell by 0.5 percent in the months from March to July 2020.
According to the Federal Employment Agency, however, this was a seasonal decline that could be determined every year - and was not primarily due to the pandemic.
The causes are therefore apprenticeship contracts that have ended and adjusted staffing processes before the summer vacation.
Kordula Schulz-Asche, spokeswoman for the elderly and care policy of the Green parliamentary group in the Bundestag, told SPIEGEL: "The corona pandemic has shown us how thin the staffing is." cannot be covered today.
Rehabilitation facilities increasingly cared for people who were struggling with the long-term consequences of a corona infection.
Meanwhile, one is "here in a worrying blind flight with regard to the personnel situation."
Shortly before the summer break, the SPD and Union had finally agreed on a care reform.
Among other things, it is intended to help geriatric care workers earn more.
Schulz-Asche calls the much-criticized solution a »nursing form«.
Specifically, the new regulation provides that from September 2022, only care facilities should be approved that pay a collective wage.
The Bundestag is due to pass the law on Friday.
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