COVID cases locally have risen “exponentially” in recent days for NHS staff - coupled with an increase in patients being admitted to local hospitals.

Dorset Council’s executive director of adult services Viv Broadhurst told councillors that at the same time hospital beds were in short supply because of ongoing problems in the care sector – preventing some patients from being discharged from wards.

She told councillors that steps were being taken to improve the situation, including bolstering rehabilitation, re-enablement and therapy services for those being discharged from hospital into care, either at home, or in a residential setting.

She said that placing people in care home beds was not the complete answer as discharged patients needed other support as well.

Her comments came in the week when Care Dorset took over social care services previously provided by Tricuro, promising to offer a better service for Dorset residents.

Care Dorset is wholly owned by Dorset Council, operating as an independent company with the aim: "to provide the right support at the right time, in the right place, now and the future.”

Lib Dem group leader on the council, Nick Ireland, said it was disappointing that the ongoing shortage of suitable care was keeping many in hospital longer than they need be and that the situation appeared not to be improving for any of the five acute hospitals which serve Dorset patients.

Cllr Bill Pipe said he wanted assurances that Care Dorset would not be “Tricuro Mark 2” and would be offering the better services which had been promised.

Dorchester councillor Molly Rennie called for a wider look at the situation to ensure that services were ‘joined up’ and seamless from the patients perspective.

“Until we can do that we will just be scratching the surface,” she said.

Dorset Council’s Corporate Director for Commissioning Jonathan Price said the change to Care Dorset on October 3 had been positive.

“We want more than just ‘business as usual’ and we will invest in it, both in revenue and capital,” he said, claiming that staff who had transferred to the organisation seemed happy to be in the new wholly-owned council business.

A report to Dorset Council in September said that 22 per cent of all social care beds in the county are currently empty, more than 700 spaces.

Many are not in use because care home owners cannot find enough staff to operate them, or because they cannot afford to re-open sections of homes they had already mothballed to help defer rapidly rising costs.

It has been estimated that around a third of all social care staff leave each year for other jobs with problems in recruiting accelerating by the rising cost of travel to and from work and many foreign workers having returned home.

Skills for Care, the industry training body, suggests that in Dorset another 3,600 care workers will be needed by 2035 to meet rising demand.

Dorset Council has been able to offered some help to the sector with an uplift in contract payments and help with recruiting and training – although with limited success.

Dorset currently has around 3,500 social care beds – 54 per cent of them being used by people who self-fund their own care; 24 per cent contracted by Dorset Council and 22 per cent vacant.