Calls were today raised for a ‘fundamental’ overhaul of home care visits, after figures highlighted 500,000 appointments that lasted less than five minutes.
Results from Freedom of Information requests published in the Daily Telegraph suggest eight of England’s councils provided over 593,000 care visits to pensioners that lasted five minutes or less between 2010/11 and 2012/13.
The results came amid mounting Government pressure to crack down on ‘clock watch services’, which charities fear do not deliver suitable levels of care for vulnerable people.
Results suggest councils including Derbyshire, Dudley, Leicestershire, Milton Keynes and North Lincolnshire were among those who commissioned five-minutes visits.
Care minister Norman Lamb has now called for a ‘fundamental shift’ away from the practice, which he branded ‘totally inappropriate and unacceptable’.
‘It is just fanciful to think that elderly people can be provided with compassionate and kind care in this sort of timeslot,’ he added.
Derbyshire County Council said that use of ‘safe and well’ calls lasting five to 15 minutes were predominantly designed to remind people to take their medication and ‘not to provide personal care’. A spokesperson added that the recording system meant it was not possible to say whether visits were less than five minutes in length, as it included cases where residents were out when the visit was made.
A spokesman for Leicestershire County Council said: ‘The minimum call time for personal care we commission and pay for is 30 minutes and any visit can be extended by up to 50% if this is needed. Records of visits lasting five minutes or less represent only 0.6% of calls and are due to operator error in logging visits or because the person due to receive care may not be at home (e.g. taken into hospital).’
Cllr Dave Branwood, cabinet member for adult and community services at Dudley Council, said the calls referred to all occurred in a single sheltered housing scheme with on site staff, where employees deployed an ‘informal way of simply knocking the door to check people are safe and well’.
‘The five minutes in no way refers to the care they receive, and would be accompanied by a detailed package of care tailored to their needs. We find these brief visits help us to be more flexible in “checking in” on people and provide them with helpful regular visits from our carers. In other words this regular pattern of frequent visits is not to be confused with examples in the private sector were the care package its self may be concentrated into a five or 10 minute visit.’
Milton Keynes and North Lincolnshire similarly said short visits came as part of wider support packages and were accompanied by longer care visits on other occasions.
Andy Cole, director of corporate affairs at Leonard Cheshire Disability, said: ‘This new research is truly shocking. Visits of 15-minutes, or even as little as five-minutes, are totally unacceptable for delivering the sort of personal care that we would expect for ourselves or our loved ones.’
‘Council care budgets are facing almost impossible pressure – with resources shrinking and demand growing. We urgently need to see greater investment in care and support.’
