Page 30 - Unfair To Care 2024 - Who Cares Wins

SIN 1. DISRUPTED CONTINUITY OF CARE
“There is an imperative to revalue what makes adult social care work at its best: the quality of trusted and reliable relationships. This in turn requires a move away from what was described as a transactional system – in which care services are clearly defined and time-limited, carried out to support someone once they meet the right eligibility criteria – towards one that values and rewards those long-term and constantly evolving relationships, whether they involve unpaid family members, personal assistants or care workers in directly provided or commissioned services.
Fundamentally, disabled adults and older people must have the same choice and control over their
life as other people. We have made that clear in the emphasis we have put on co-production and the need to share decision making so that the right solutions can be found. All of our recommendations.... have
the objective of enabling people to exercise greater choice over their own care and their own life.”
HOUSE OF LORDS, ADULT SOCIAL CARE COMMITTEE - ‘A “GLORIOUSLY ORDINARY LIFE”: SPOTLIGHT ON ADULT SOCIAL CARE’. DECEMBER 2022
“We all want to live in the place we call home, with the people and things we love, in communities where we look out for each other, doing the things that matter to us.”
SOCIAL CARE FUTURE
SECTION 6: THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS
At the heart of quality social care is the relationship between people. Unfair low pay causes high staff turnover and staff shortages that disrupts relationships and continuity of care, and therefore undermines the quality of social care people receive. This has been emphasised time and time again by major reports into social care.
“We believe that a National Care Covenant would make it clear that care and support is about more
than contractual obligations and statutory duties, but rather a deeply profound set of relationships in which we are bound to one another. Everyone has a role to play in reimagining care and support, ensuring that we can all live the full life for which we were created.”
THE ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY AND YORK REIMAGINING CARE COMMISSION - ‘CARE AND SUPPORT REIMAGINED: A NATIONAL CARE COVENANT FOR ENGLAND’ REPORT. JANUARY 2023
The Health Foundation33 highlights that understanding a person’s fundamental care and support routines alone obviously does not equal good support. They explain the clear impact that people experience when they do not have consistency of support, stating: “Even if each care worker does everything exactly the same way, they’ll miss out
on building a personal relationship. A lot of people who need care are vulnerable and have complex needs, and an understanding of those needs is built up over time.”
33. ’Stemming the tide: retaining the social care workforce’, The Health Foundation, April 2019
Skills for Care’s research demonstrates that high staff turnover disrupts continuity of care, and the CQC in their 2023 State of Care report cited one social care provider who said: “A lack of staff is our biggest barrier to providing good care. It also makes continuity in the carers that those who use our service come into contact with very difficult.”
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