Care minister orders review over 15-minute home visits

Care Quality Commission will look at whether visits are long enough to respond to people’s needs, Norman Lamb announces

Norman Lamb, the care minister.

The government is to announce a review into 15-minute care visits to vulnerable elderly and disabled people following concerns that such appointments deprive people of their dignity and put unfair pressure on staff.

In response to criticism from charities, the care minister Norman Lamb will say that from next April the Care Quality Commission will look at whether home care visits are “long enough to respond to people’s needs” and “consider looking at how staff working conditions might be impacting on care”.

In a speech to the National Children and Adult Services conference, Lamb will say that the regulator will consider not only whether care is “delivered with compassion, dignity and respect”, but also how many staff are employed on zero-hour contracts, considered to be the reason why up to 220,000 care workers get less than the minimum wage.

Care workers who visit vulnerable people in their homes are increasingly forced to cram tasks such as bathing, feeding and cleaning into ever tighter schedules. Figures obtained by Leonard Cheshire, the largest voluntary sector provider of disabled care, found that in the past five years the proportion of visits lasting a quarter of an hour or shorter had risen by 15%. Almost two-thirds of local councils are now commissioning 15-minute visits.

Experts say the reason for such tiny slices of care time is that cuts to council funding have led to a £2.6bn reduction in social care budgets.

Lamb will say: “The current approach to home care is not fair on those who need support, it’s not fair on care workers and it is stripping away the human element of caring.

“Fifteen minutes is not enough time to help people who are older or who have a disability to do everyday things like wash, dress and get out of bed. Some do not even get the chance to have a conversation with their home care worker, who may be the only person they see that day.”

Labour said that the government had been forced into a U-turn. Liz Kendall, the shadow care services minister, said: “The scandal of 15-minute home vists must not be accepted. It is leaving vulnerable people to get up, wash, dress and be fed in too short a time. The government must take responsibility for the huge cuts to local council funding that has made this problem.

She said that although Lamb had publicly criticised 15-minute personal care visits, there was nothing in the government’s care bill in the upper house earlier this month to “prevent this practice from continuing and, indeed, from spreading further”. “You really have to have the money to be able to do that,” she said.

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