Liberal Democrats pass a motion on home care

At the recent Federal Conference in Glasgow, the Liberal Democrats debated Home Care. Here is the text of the motion that was passed.

"Conference notes the importance of providing high quality home care for the elderly, disabled and vulnerable and believes the key to this is ensuring properly trained staff with adequate time and resources to carry out their duties.

Conference further notes that while the Government has recognised the importance of raising the status and qualifications for those working in child care, the same is not the case for those working in home care and a largely female workforce remains low-paid, low-status and often exploited.

Conference is concerned that poor employment practices, unrealistic targets, unequal distribution of funds, lack of training, lack of consultation and proper support for care staff, has led to abuse, bullying and harassment of both staff and clients.

Conference believes that home care could be vastly improved and vulnerable people better protected through a range of measures and calls on the Government to:

1. Ensure staff are allowed enough time to deal with service users' needs and to travel between calls.

2. Hold the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to account for properly monitoring care and follow up when care companies fail to meet standards.

3. Ensure the CQC website is user friendly, in particular making it clear how whistleblowers can make anonymous complaints.

4. Ensure that local authorities commission care on the basis of outcomes - better care, improving people's mobility, improving their health and well being - rather than the current 'race to the bottom' in which standards of care are inevitably compromised.

5. Ensure staff training, includes equality and diversity, interpersonal skills, dealing with dementia and customer care.

6. Raise the status of care workers through better training, career progression and commensurate reward.

7. Improve employment practices to bring the care sector more into line with normal employment standards, for example ensuring that the use of zero hours contracts is the exception rather than the rule and used only when absolutely necessary and ensuring staff are properly reimbursed for things like training and travel."