Home Care Report

Healthwatch Sheffield aimed to understand the quality of home care in Sheffield by gathering the views and experiences of users of home care and family carers. To achieve this, focus groups and semi-structured interviews in person and via the telephone were conducted in February and March 2018.

There were 43 people who provided their experiences of home care, including 10 service users and 33 family carers who had a role in supporting their relative/s alongside paid home care. The report compared their findings with the NICE guidelines regarding planning and delivering person-centred home care. The findings showed that there were reports of late, missed and inappropriate timing of care visits that were rushed. There was a lack of continuity of care and care plans were not followed or reviewed regularly. Family carers felt there was a lack of opportunities for them to give feedback and difficulty making complaints. They also felt that there is a lack of training, supervision and monitoring of home care workers and no experience or qualifications are needed to do the job.

Healthwatch Sheffield made six recommendations to commissioners and home care service providers including: Improve experiences of accessing & spending financial support; improve experience and reduce risk in relation to the timing & length of care visits; address a lack of continuity of care; encourage care plans to be read & a responsive approach to reviews; improve the experience of making a complaint & create conditions where feedback about services is valued and used; and enable a more consistent, joined up approach to workforce training & improve the credibility of care workers & how they are recruited.