SVT Nyheter Öst has sent a survey to all municipalities in Östergötland and on Gotland.
All respondents testify to a strained staffing situation and in several places the schedule for the summer has hardly been put together.
- The summer has been solved for the care in Boxholm municipality, however, it has been solved at the last minute and our regular pool can go in and cover certain parts, for example Erja Kumpulainen answers SVT's survey.
She is unit manager for health and care in Boxholm municipality.
Recruited 17-year-olds
To solve the summer schedule, the municipalities have been forced to take several different measures.
In the municipalities of Valdemarsvik and Kinda, for example, and on Gotland, regular staff who give up holiday weeks receive extra compensation, and in the municipality of Vadstena, 17-year-olds have been recruited to service positions in certain units - in an attempt to relieve the assistant nurses.
SVT Nyheter Öst has received responses from ten of 14 municipalities.
Of the respondents, only Motala states that they solved the staffing in a good way.
But Motala has also had a greater challenge than usual in recruiting staff for the summer.
- We feel that it has been a greater challenge with the recruitment of summer substitutes this year, which we had a premonition of based on the way we work with, among other things, external monitoring, answers Vardo Aldemir, operations manager at Motala municipality.
Language difficulties and no experience
The difficulties in recruiting are several, according to the municipalities.
Valdemarsvik municipality states that they had few applicants, Boxholm that they have had few applicants who can speak Swedish and have any experience of care work at all.
In Norrköping, they have succeeded in recruiting more than 700 summer substitutes over the summer - but the staffing problem is greater than that in the regular staffing and this means that the substitutes are still not enough.
- It is fragile, we have to work with the staff all the time, answers Susanne Andersson, unit manager at Norrköping municipality.