Not gardens; home care.
Posy
Posts: 3,601
Is this a silly thought - I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
I live in an area with a few small towns and lots of small or tiny villages. We have a high proportion of elderly people, many of whom require assistance at home. There are dozens of privately owned care providers.
Every morning, hundreds of women, (they are nearly all women) set out in their cars to visit the homes of the elderly. They drive between villages, all over the Island, covering many miles, a couple of clients here, a few there. They are badly paid and, to be fair, many of the companies are struggling to survive in the present squeeze.
If just ONE organising body took over - say the NHS - they could timetable carers to cover a certain area: less driving, less cost, less pollution and more time with the client. Perhaps better wages.
Does that make sense?
I live in an area with a few small towns and lots of small or tiny villages. We have a high proportion of elderly people, many of whom require assistance at home. There are dozens of privately owned care providers.
Every morning, hundreds of women, (they are nearly all women) set out in their cars to visit the homes of the elderly. They drive between villages, all over the Island, covering many miles, a couple of clients here, a few there. They are badly paid and, to be fair, many of the companies are struggling to survive in the present squeeze.
If just ONE organising body took over - say the NHS - they could timetable carers to cover a certain area: less driving, less cost, less pollution and more time with the client. Perhaps better wages.
Does that make sense?
0
Posts
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Hasn't it?
It was called compulsory competitive tendering (CCT), and local authorities were obliged
to measure their in house care service against private sector care providers, and usually gave the contract to the cheapest.
So it was a race to the bottom, and we continue to pay the price for that debacle.
Some of our local care providers have electric fleet cars for employees, so at least the effect on the climate is limited.
The whole thing needs a root and branch review, and one which recognises and values the workers providing the care.
Bee x
A single bee creates just one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
We could select carers from 'in-house' (ie LA care teams) or from 2 or 3 approved private care agencies. It was always a case of not who might provide the best care, but who had the capacity to supply a carer to visit an isolated cottage - miles from any other client - at 8am - knowing they'd only be paid for a 30 minute visit even when the total time taken to drive to and from and conduct the visit might take nearly 2hrs.
The in-house team nearly always bagged the prime clients in the more densely populated villages - minimum travel between visits and a small team could complete 20 or 30 visits in a 2hr slot.
It was the private agencies that had to pick up all the isolated / very early / very late visits.
It was all made more difficult because we wanted to help individuals retain a little dignity by trying to schedule visits to suit them. If 20 widely separated people all want a 'rise and shine' call at 8am and a 'put to bed' service at 9pm it just can't be done so people have visits at times that don't suit them. As a late riser and late to bed person I absolutely dread the thought of being dragged out of bed at 7am in winter and being put to bed at 6.30pm in summer - but it had to happen to some people.
Trying to organise a 9pm bedtime visit to remote properties was impossible - 7pm at the very latest even in summer...
One of the agency carers at The Home about 6 weeks ago, didn't know how to do a lateral flow test. Clearly she'd never done one for herself, let along anyone else.
One wonders what she's been up to for the 2 years