UNISON has launched its Ethical Care campaign to improve the UK’s homecare system for the people who receive it and the workers who provide it.
Our Time to Care report into the current state of homecare illustrated the many failings of the current system.
Time to Care report [PDF]
Homecare workers are suffering from poverty pay, schedules that force them to rush and leave visits early, reports the Daily Mail, while the service users are suffering from too many changes in homecare workers who are not given enough time to allow even a conversation.
As one homecare worker wrote in the report “I never seem to have enough time for the human contact and care that these people deserve”.
So UNISON has created an Ethical Care Charter , which provides a set of standards that we want councils to stick to when they commission homecare services.
The charter calls for service users to be given the time to talk with their homecare workers and receive the same worker wherever possible.
It calls for homecare workers to be treated with dignity and allowed to do their jobs better, to be paid at least a living wage, including travel time, and to recreive with regular quality training.
Copies of the report and the Ethical Care Charter have now been sent to all council leaders and chief executives in England, Wales and Scotland, and to health and social care trust chief executives in Northern Ireland.
Please take a minute to send an email to your local councillorto ask them to adopt the charter.
You will be helping to create communities where people in receipt of care and those who provide it are both treated with the dignity and respect that they deserve.
Ethical Care Charter [PDF]
