Home Care provision in Kingston 2017

Healthwatch Kingston Community Care Task Group began a project to look into the current home care provision in Kingston and decided to examine the experience of people accessing these services. As the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames was in the process of re-commissioning Home Care provision, Healthwatch Kingston decided to gather service user experience, to ensure that people’s needs are being listened to, to learn from the current provision, what people think works well, and what areas could be improved and how.

HW designed a questionnaire to gather the views and experience of people in the areas of: Staff attitude; Ease of communication; Consistency of staff; Service users’ level of involvement in planning their care support plan and Quality of care. The team then managed to procure 4 out of the 5 agencies, which the council was spot-purchasing services, to distribute these questionnaires. The questionnaire was also made available as on online form through the website and social media in attempt to reach more users. Healthwatch also carried out outreach visits to two Staywell day centres to distribute the questionnaires and offered a prize draw of 4 M&S £20 vouchers to give people incentive to complete the questionnaire.

66 people completed the questionnaire, out of which 50% said they paid for their home care and 40% said they chose their home care package with the help of a friend or relative. Regarding staff attitudes, 68% people said they were extremely satisfied with the attitude of their care worker and 74% felt they were treated with respect and dignity. Overall the satisfaction rate with the homecare staff attitude and communication was very high amongst the respondents. The quality of care was rated very high also with 83% saying the care they received helped them live independently and 67% had been provided with a support plan.

However, the report shows concerns that 18% of respondents were having difficulty communicating with their care worker. There were some other ‘disturbing’ results that are identified in the report especially with the vulnerability of the clients in mind.

HW Kingston made several recommendations to both the care agencies and the Borough of Kingston, which are listed in the report.

There was no response from the service providers included in the report.