Andrea Sutcliffe, the director of social care at the CQC, has commented on the use of 15-minute care visits for dementia patients. Such visits have been named by CQC as ‘ineffective, inappropriate and unsafe’.
She said “Ultimately this is about needs. If you are providing a service for someone living with dementia, if you go in and all you are there for is 15 minutes, how confusing is that for the person you are supposed to be providing a service to? How can that be reasonable to meet their needs, effective in supporting them, appropriate for them?” She added “How can it be ‘caring’ when the person is still confused about who has just come through the door? How can it be safe when the person does not know what’s going on? What are the leadership and management of that company doing in saying that is an appropriate way to provide services?”
She has suggested that ratings for services that provide 15-minute visits to service users with dementia are at potential risk of being penalised when the new CQC rating system is introduced from October this year.
However, we would suggest that the commissioners should be taking responsibility. Providers can only act within the confines of the funding they receive and his should be recognised by CQC when it decides on ratings for such services.
However, a spokeswoman for the Local Government Association said that “A reduction of £2.6 billion to adult social care services over the past three years means local authorities are struggling to meet the rising demand for home care visits. Unless local government finance is put on a sustainable footing social care will remain substantially underfunded and services will suffer as a result.”
