Spotlight on home care

Home care services are a highly valued service which is of great benefit to nearly 900,000 people in the UK. It is a service which is in high demand as the population ages, but is under significant financial strain in the state-funded sector. There have been a number of national reports in recent years, as well as media stories, raising concerns and the challenges within the home care sector. Healthwatch Newcastle has undertaken research in light of these reports, to understand better the views of service users in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Healthwatch Newcastle carried out a large scale survey of service users, carers and relatives, and home care workers to gather their feedback on various aspects of home care services. Receiving 363 responses between October 2015 and January 2016 enabled us to gather statistically significant data from this seldom heard group of service users, carers and relatives. Our survey found that service users were very satisfied with the overall quality of care provided and value the service very highly.

However, there were a number of areas where respondents called for improvements: continuity of care worker, communication between provider and service user, medicine management, care worker training, care worker punctuality and time allocation, how care workers are managed and supported, complaints handling and continuity of care worker and the communication between provider and service user were the two most important areas where survey respondents wanted to see improvements. Respondents spoke loudly about the negative consequences of having many different care workers providing care in their home, and about lapses in the correct provision of medicines. Ten recommendations have been made for service improvement, mostly related to implementing performance indicators to monitor improvement in the areas above. Healthwatch Newcastle hope these recommendations can be adopted as part of the new provider contracts to be commissioned in 2016.