Local Neighbourhood Care Service – part 2: service user experience

Home Care (also called domiciliary care) is social care provided in people’s own homes. Home Care can include personal care, such as help with washing and dressing, as well as other types of support like preparing meals and doing laundry. Some people live in self-contained, independent accommodation with 24/7 support, called Extra Care. Many of these residents also use Home Care.

Healthwatch Greenwich undertook a project to understand the experiences of service users and informal carers of using Home Care and Extra Care. Using semi-structured interviews with 12 people, Healthwatch Greenwich asked about the service received and levels of satisfaction with it.

The factors most valued by service users and informal carers were continuity of care staff, staff reliability, staff attitudes, competence in undertaking tasks, and good communication of changes. Sources of dissatisfaction include poor quality or rushed completion of tasks by care staff, staff unreliability and discontinuity, lack of communication of changes, lack of opportunity to provide feedback, and lack of appropriate training for care staff.

The report has eight recommendations.

1. Regular engagement with service users.
2. A clarified complaints process, produced in ‘plain English’.
3. Adherence to wearing name badges for paid carers.
4. Greater communication about what first-aid training paid carers receive.
5. Inclusion of ‘normal presentation’ (what a person is like when well) in paid carers notes/handovers.
6. Better monitoring of time keeping
7. Monitoring of timelines of response to call bells in Extra Care Quality Commission Kindness workshops at Extra Care sites.