So how many Occupational Therapists have we got?
"The Adult and Community Care Committee kept hearing about poor service caused by staffing problems," explains County Councillor Diana Smith. "So it set up a task group to look at recruitment and retention. Proper statistics were hard to come by. We eventually got figures for the reported high vacancy rates in 'front line' teams, from 18% among the essential home based care staff to 31% of highly-skilled occupational therapists. We heard of one team of occupational therapists entirely consisting of stand-ins.