As someone with a parent in end of life care this is very much the case. We've been pretty lucky in that the staff are excellent and caring but that's no thanks to the company that runs the place, and that's been the case before and after ownership changed hands.
My Dad's care home has in the past failed an inspection and also been put in special measures but the reality is there's very little they can do. When the home was put in special measures, which was at the time the visa rules were changed and was purely a result of them not being able to get enough staff, there were discussions about what could potentially happen.
Ultimately they close the home but then you have the issue that there is already a massive shortage of places so in reality they want to avoid that at all costs.
You could hand out big fines to the owners but we all know that would just be passed on.
Rule around number of staff and levels of care already exist. The problem is what do you do when you can't recruit staff, you can't just shut down care homes and chuck people out on the street. Wages do need to go up but its a sector wide problem. As with anything and everything we've handed over to the private sector there's people at the top making a fortune with the absolute minimum investment being made and poverty wages being paid.
Realistically unless you create some sort of National Care Service that is highly unlikely to change. Any improvements in pay and conditions will just lead to increased prices so those at the top can continue to take millions out in profits and dividends.
They need to give the staff some kind of career pathway, as well as higher wages and make carers jobs a job that people want to stay in.
As it stands, anyone at all can become a carer and I`m sure many just see it as a stop gap until they can get another job, hence one of the reasons why there`s such a high turn over of staff.
A mate of ours lost her job at short notice with a small company, she did IT and all the sales stuff for them.
Due to the fact that she lived in a rural area, jobs of any kind are hard to come by.
She had all the usual bills to pay and had to find a job to avoid rapidly falling into debt and the week after she lost her job, she was working as a carer for an agency, getting paid per client, a small mileage allowance, but crucially, not getting paid for her travelling time and ended up working mental hours due to the travelling and trying to fit all the clients in.
She lasted two weeks, before she packed it in.
All of her training was online and she never went on any type of induction or training course.
Another thing I`ve come across through one of my previous jobs and coming into contact with nursing home staff, is that you can have whole generations of families working within a nursing home - mother / her daughters / their daughters and in some case their daughters too !
This creates a very unhealthy working environment, where families like I`ve mentioned above, quite literally call the shots within the nursing home and this can lead to serious abuse and neglect of the residents, as well as a high turnover of staff.
The whole thing is a mess, but the cost of reforming it and putting things right is mind boggling and every government that comes in, does the same thing, sticks it`s head in the sand and kicks the can down the road.
www.bbc.co.uk
