Staffordshire County Council plans zero tolerance of poor care
Private care homes which fail to meet satisfactory standards will be named and shamed by a local authority under pioneering moves to improve social care services.
Staffordshire County Council also wants to be the first in the country to set a local minimum working wage for all care staff delivering services on its behalf in a bid to raise the sector’s status and professionalism.
Matthew Ellis, the council’s cabinet member for adults’ wellbeing, said that his green paper for a Revolution in Care Quality had attracted “significant” attention at a national level, including the support of health leaders.
He said: “Expectations of care services have constantly been lowered in this country, and while there are many brilliant services out there, it is fair to say that unfortunately some services meet these low expectations. This is about saying that enough is enough.
“Let’s aim much higher and get away from this idea that people who stack shelves in supermarkets broadly get more money than the people who look after the most vulnerable in our society, because it is just wrong.”
Ellis warned care providers that they could expect a culture of “zero-tolerance of poor quality”, and that details of suspensions and investigations into alleged service failures would be routinely shared with care users and their relatives, while the best performing services would receive payment premiums.
And he said that the council would work with providers to help them cut overheads and procurement costs in order to help fund the higher wages and service improvements expected of them.
He added: “This is about the whole care system needing to work (and) we hope it will filter out to the rest of the county and possibly beyond. I hope that it will be a call to arms to make the leap to really excellent services.”
