Care scheme ends
THE local health authority is being partly blamed for Argyll’s ‘successful’ pioneer home care scheme coming to an end.
THE local health authority is being partly blamed for Argyll’s ‘successful’ pioneer home care scheme coming to an end.
Appin and Lismore Community Care Scheme was ‘potentially a very good solution’ to the problems of home care in Argyll’s remote area, Dr Iain McNicol, the chairman of Appin Community Trust, said, ‘and it was developing nicely, but it was not given time to develop’.
Lismore Community Council explained in its September draft minutes: ‘The original plan was for the grant from Argyll and Bute Council to last one year, after which Appin and Lismore Homecare (A&LH) would be able to fund itself. It appears the group is not able to do this. It seems not enough people took up the offer of having their care provided by A&LH to cover the overhead costs.
‘Without more funding the co-ordinator’s contract will lapse and, it is believed, A&LH will cease to be able to provide the service. Members of A&LH felt strongly continued funding to extend the co-ordinator’s contract was desirable. Nobody present had figures showing how close A&LH is to meeting its objective of covering its costs.’
The Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) decided not to fund the co-ordinator Elizabeth Bruce’s post beyond October 15 due to the scheme being ‘unable to attract sufficient residents’ and ‘issues in recruiting and retaining staff’.
HSCP disclosed three residents in Lismore and two in Appin had subscribed to the scheme, but it refused to say how many residents were sufficient to retain the co-ordinator’s post, or how close the scheme came to that cut-off point.
An HSCP spokesman said: ‘Local residents have the legal right to choose their own care provider. The project, working with Highland Homecare, is continuing without the role of the co-ordinator. We have commissioned care from one of our independent partner providers to ensure all care is delivered until an agreeable solution is found.’
A disappointed and frustrated Dr McNicol said: ‘If the people who got the private care moved over [to the community scheme], it would have had the right numbers. It is coming to an end and we are metamorphosing into something different. By most parameters the scheme was successful.’
As tasked, the scheme trained 12 carers – four on Lismore and eight in Appin – and then devised an efficient system to organise them.
Dr McNicol explained that it would have been simple for the ‘very experienced’ co-ordinator Elizabeth Bruce to do the assessments, but instead the HSCP insisted they conduct their own ‘cumbersome’ assessments, which ‘created time delays of three to four months per patient’.
With no work imminent during that period, four trained carers, who were looking for full-time work, left for other jobs.
Dr McNicol added: ‘We did not get the chance to build up the numbers as quickly as we would have hoped. It became chicken and egg.’
The HSCP the ‘suddenly produced a request for 56 hours for one client a week, and we could not do that. [Ms Bruce] said she could not responsibly take that on with that short notice,’ said Dr McNicol. ‘The carers have formed a community interest company and they have applied for registration with the Care Commission. That will take six months. Then Argyll and Bute will assess if it is fit for them to fund it. That will take another two months.’
This means people will find getting care difficult for the next eight months, he said, unless they can afford it.
‘They were just defending budgets,’ Dr McNicol said. ‘It costs money to organise a good, safe scheme. We are not tackling social care properly in the UK. We seem to think we can do it on the cheap. Some 35 per cent of the Appin population are over 65. This is not going to get easier.’