Another care system disgrace

This could almost be a continuation of the last post.

The Leonard Cheshire Disability Charity have today done all of us a great service by drawing attention to the fact that a large proportion of all visits to the housebound (many of whom have dementia) by paid carers, funded by Local Authorities, last no longer than 15 minutes.

In fact, it's become clear during the day that in some cases it's even worse than that. As some companies do not reimburse staff for time spent travelling between jobs, many '15 minute' visits are in fact even shorter.

To put it starkly, vulnerable and helpless people who are dependent on these care visits, are often having to choose between being fed or being toileted.

Yet there are some Local Authorities who refuse to fund care visits lasting less than 30 minutes.  So it is possible to have a sane system.

The really depressing thing is that I would be willing to bet that the situation will be exactly the same in a year's time

Care workers on zero-hours contracts

It's interesting to learn from the current, and fully justified, campaign against the use of zero-hours contracts that thousands of care workers are on zero-hours contracts.

Could there, I wonder, possibly be any connection between this fact and the often-expressed view that the service provided by organisations that provide care for profit is not always acceptable?

(The many readers of this blog who aren't UK-based may not be aware of this controversy.   It is becoming clear that hundreds of thousands of people 'employed' in the UK, some of them by very well-known companies, are on 'zero-hours contracts'.  This means that they are not guaranteed any work and do not have the same employment rights as other workers.  Yet some of the companies actually forbid them to take any other employment while they are 'contracted'.)

This is what we have sunk to

I'm amazed that this story has not been given greater exposure:

No food, no water, no medication - left to die in her own home

What this appears to tell us that in the UK in 2012, it's more important to crack down on allegedly illegal immigrants than to keep an elderly woman, who is paying for her own 'care', alive. What she must have gone through doesn't bear thinking about.

I am aware from reading online forums that there are many elderly confused people (often actually suffering from dementia) in the same situation, totally dependent on carers and with minimal, if any, contact with family.

As a British politician once said: 'I warn you not to grow old.'