Elderly care ‘needs staff shake-up’

29 Feb 12
A dedicated body should be created to set standards for the regulation and training of care home staff, according to a major report.

By Richard Johnstone | 29 February 2012

A dedicated body should be created to set standards for the regulation and training of care home staff, according to a major report.

The report recommends that care home residents should be more involved in the recruitment of staff. Photo: Shutterstock

The Commission on Improving Dignity in Care for Older People was set up last year by the NHS Confederation, the Local Government Association and the charity Age UK. Its initial report, published today after an eight-month inquiry, warns that the care sector needs ‘fundamental change’.

Delivering dignity calls for a forum to look at all aspects of care home staffing. This would work with the government’s planned Nursing and Care Quality Forum to examine the pay of carers, as well as the qualifications needed and staff regulation.

The inquiry also found that in ‘too many cases, people have been let down when they were vulnerable and most needed help’.

Among the report’s other recommendations are that residents should be given more power in the running of care homes and a greater role in staff recruitment. It said each home should have a residents' charter and recruitment should be based on ‘values as well as skills’. Employees should be hired for their ‘compassionate values’ as well as their qualifications.

Those that pay for and plan services – often local authorities – should set out clearly the ‘dignity standards’ expected from providers, the report says. Recently published quality standards for patient experience in adult services from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence should be used to measure performance, it says.

The report, which is now out for consultation, follows the February 2011 Care and compassion study by the parliamentary and health service ombudsman, Ann Abraham, which found serious flaws in care services.

The commission’s co-chairs said their findings should be ‘a call to arms to the whole health and social care system’.

NHS Confederation chair Sir Keith Pearson, Age UK chair Dianne Jeffrey and the LGA's community wellbeing board chair David Rogers said everyone in the sector needed ‘to work together to earn back public confidence’.

They added: ‘We know there are some hospitals and care homes providing great care, and we need to learn from them to get dignified care right for every person every time.’

Responding to the report, care services minister Paul Burstow said that the ‘big challenge’ was how to translate the commission’s recommendations into action.

He added: ‘The commission's draft report makes some good recommendations for the improvements needed, and I look forward to working with them after their consultation to see how we can bring about the changes needed at the front line. 

We are setting up a Nursing and Care Quality Forum which will help ensure that nurses spend more time on frontline care in wards and other services and that there is a senior ward nurse with whom the buck stops. This will strengthen the focus on nurse leadership and openness about the quality of care.’

The Royal College of Nursing called on hospitals and care homes to employ a ‘safe’ numbers of nurses to ensure the growing needs of the UK population are met.

Welcoming the report, general secretary Peter Carter urged the government to consider setting minimum guaranteed staffing levels.

Spacer

CIPFA logo

PF Jobsite logo

Did you enjoy this article?

AddToAny

Top