Councils must give care staff time to work, ombudsman says
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Care workers must have enough time during visits to do their job properly, an ombudsman has said after he found an agency's staff visiting a dementia patient stayed for just three minutes.
Care Ombudsman Michael King found agency staff commissioned by Warrington Council repeatedly stayed for less than the 15 minutes allocated for visits.
He said authorities must ensure "the care they arrange is sufficient".
The council said its approach met legal requirements and was person-centred.
Mr King, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO), launched an investigation after he received a complaint from the son of Mrs Y, who has dementia and had been allocated a 30-minute call in the morning and two 15-minute calls in the afternoon and evening.
He told Mr King the care workers did not stay for the allocated time, despite the family paying for the full visit.
Records logged using an electronic call system showed that on a number of occasions between September and November 2019, the care workers did not stay for the whole allocated time.
Visits as short as three minutes were recorded during the 15-minute slots and there were also several occasions where care workers stayed for less than 30 minutes during the morning call.
'Rarely enough'
Mr King said there was fault by the council in commissioning 15-minute calls because he did not see how the required care could have been completed in that time "without rushing Mrs Y".
His wider investigation found there were 313 other adults in the borough receiving 15-minute visits, "despite national guidance stressing these were 'not usually appropriate'".
Recommending that the council both apologises to Mrs Y's family and pays them £500, and reviews a sample of 30 other adults receiving 15-minute calls, Mr King said authorities "need to make sure that the care they arrange is sufficient to meet people's needs".
"When looking at visits which may require care workers to dress, wash or feed a person, 15 minutes is rarely enough," he said.
"We are increasingly looking at complaints from a human rights perspective - and councils need to consider the rights of service users to have a private life when commissioning or delivering care.
"At the heart of this investigation are people, often vulnerable, who rely on care visits to give them the dignity and quality of life they rightly deserve."
In a statement, the council said about 11% of its home-care packages for people in Warrington were 15-minute visits.
It said it accepted the view of the LGSCO and were "complying with the recommendations they have set out".
"We have already undertaken reviews of people in receipt of 15-minute calls to ensure they are appropriate, and we are planning further work in the next two months which will include independent assessment of our work," a representative said.
"We will use the findings from the report and our own assessments to assure current and future service provision meets the required standards."
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