Home Helps Say Time Targets Putting Frail Pensioners At Risk

THE health of frail pensioners is being put at risk as home helps struggle to meet time targets, council chiefs have been warned. Workers say they are increasingly being put under pressure to squeeze tasks such as feeding, washing and administering medicine to some of the city’s most vulnerable people, that usually take an hour, into 30 minutes.

According to the Unison union, some home helpers are going off sick with stress, and recipients of the care – often in their 90s – are missing out on care because staff do not have the time.

Councillors have been told that management are not factoring in the time it takes to travel between jobs, meaning some social care workers are running hours behind schedule every day.

At a City Chambers meeting, home help Louise Livingstone told councillors: “We were always taught from the start to give these people dignity, and a lot of that has gone from the job now because we are not given the time.

“Some days I don’t even get time to take a sip of water, or even to shake my jacket dry if it is raining. You have no time to make a relationship with people who you are supposed to be helping.

“A lot of them don’t have any family, and when you rush out the door without time to even pat them on the arm, you are shutting the door on them and that’s all they’ve got.

“I would ask that when you think about the money, don’t forget about the people and the staff.”

Labour’s health spokeswoman Cllr Lesley Hinds had raised the debate after guidelines were introduced last year to “maximise” the use of half-hour slots rather than 60 minutes.

This has led to at least 1000 elderly people in the city receiving reduced time, Unison said, adding that the council eventually wants to abandon the hour slot altogether and move everyone on to half-hour treatments.

Unison shop steward Marilyn Tweedie, herself a former home help in Edinburgh, said: “About a year ago when the guidelines came in we expressed concerns and these fears have been borne out.

“These people are in risky categories. One of the most important times of the day is the early morning session where people get helped out of bed, have their breakfast made and washed and there isn’t enough time to do all this now.”

The council argued that some action had to be taken to redress the £3.5 million overspend the department was clocking up on this matter, and that there was no need to change the maximising of the half-hour time slots.

Health and social care leader Cllr Paul Edie said: “I’m content in the way this (service] is being managed. We are getting a better quality of care for more people.”

But Cllr Hinds, whose motion of a full-scale review was rejected by the committee, said: “It disturbs me that the council doesn’t want to take action on this.”

The committee did agree to produce two future reports on the challenges facing home helps, particularly time taken to travel between jobs.