It’s time to ban 15 minute care slots – elderly people deserve better

“I’ve worked as a home carer for 15 years. Things have to change but not at the expense of clients. It’s appalling the level of care they receive now. No home cooked meals, no time to chat. More clients getting 15 minute visits. As you don’t have time mistakes are going to be made. Dementia clients are rushed, which is the worst thing you can do. It’s depressing and upsetting.”

 – A care worker featured in UNISON’s Time to Care report

UNISON has been sounding alarm bells about the scandalous elderly care crisis in the UK and thankfully consensus is growing around the urgent need for action.

More than 5000,000 elderly people in the UK receive care in their own homes and 80% is provided by private companies, commissioned by councils. Even before the financial crisis, cash strapped local authorities were selling care slots off to the lowest bidder – awarding contracts on cost, not quality. The Coalition’s 33% council budget cuts have only made matters worse – piling yet more pressure onto a seriously overstretched and underfunded system. Day in day out, care workers see elderly people suffering because the current set up is failing to provide them with dignified, compassionate care.

Fifteen-minute care visits exemplify the inadequacy of this care-on-the-cheap system. In the government’s own words, 15 minute home care appointments ‘risk stripping people of their dignity and jeopardising their human rights’. However, the government has failed to ban their use, and new FOIs for UNISON show that three quarters of councils are still commissioning these whistlestop visits.

Care workers say 15 minutes is not enough to provide even basic care. Frail elderly people cannot move quickly, making it impossible to carry out the range of tasks that often have to be completed in 15 minutes – feeding, bathing, administering medicines and getting people up or into bed. People with dementia find the rush of such a short visit particularly distressing.

On 15 minutes care visits, home carers have no time to talk to elderly people, which is worrying given that they can be the only daily source of social contact for some elderly people – the impact of loneliness on health and wellbeing is well documented. Care workers also worry they’ll make mistakes with medication because of the rush and pressure of a 15 minute call.

But the problems with the system do not end there. Last week, Norman Lamb brought unions, care companies, council leaders and industry experts together to investigate how improvements to the system could be made. The elephant in the room was money – it will be impossible to make the drastic improvement to the system that is necessary unless the government makes a political choice to put more money on the table.

We need to take radical action to improve the standing of care workers who hold the system together with their hard work and dedication. For 15 minute visits care workers regularly get paid less than £2. They’re increasingly employed on precarious zero hours contracts and have to fund their own uniforms, transport and training. Care workers are rarely paid for the time it takes to get between their clients, pulling their already low pay below minimum wage rates. Despite this bargain basement treatment, many work in their own time to care for clients but often find they can’t afford to stay in the sector long – turnover rates are high, which impacts on the continuity of care that elderly people find so beneficial.

UNISON wants the government to ban 15 minute care slots, and for councils to sign up to its Ethical Home Care Charter which sets out basic standards for home care and its commissioning. It is too simplistic to blame private companies for the chronic failure of the system – councils have to start taking responsibility for the services they commission by writing basic conditions into contracts – and the government does too. The reality cannot be denied. Unless action is taken, elderly people will continue to suffer.

Karen Jennings is Assistant General Secretary of Unison. This piece forms part of our coverage of Unison conference, which is taking place in Liverpool this week