Care home staff to have compulsory training under government plans to protect elderly

[Northerner]

Care home staff will be forced to undergo compulsory training for the first time under government plans to protect the elderly from abuse and neglect, The Telegraph can disclose.

The lack of basic requirements for training care workers is leaving frail pensioners in the hands of staff who have ?no idea what they are doing?, Norman Lamb, the health minister, warned.

Proposals expected within weeks will outline national minimum standards for preparing new recruits to work in nursing homes. Carers who help with tasks such as washing and dressing elderly people in their own homes will also be required to undertake the training.

The new rules could be extended to hospitals to improve standards among health care assistants and auxiliary nurses in the wake of the Mid Staffordshire NHS scandal.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/e...nder-government-plans-to-protect-elderly.html

 

[LeeLee]

At the acute Trust I used to work for, care support workers had be qualified, and those who came in without had to go through an apprenticeship programme. Trainees were the only ones without at least an NVQ, and they were working towards it. All staff had to undergo mandatory training appropriate to their jobs. Why should care homes get away without being that rigorous?

 

[trophywench]

Well of course they shouldn't. But when you pay peanuts and generally keep a mega-tight rein on every brass farthing of expenditure - because this is a money generating business, Care doesn't really come into it in an awful lot of places - what can you expect?

I had a friend - highly qualified nurse - who worked in a privately run nursing home for the elderly and she was forever complaining about the slapdash way the care workers performed - some of em couldn't even straighten a bottom sheet properly which is a huge issue for bedridden people cos of bedsores etc. Think she did more training than she did nursing and most of em hated working with her cos she didn't let em get away with stuff. If she ever got a good one, they'd say thanks - and go and find a better job someplace else.

Funnily enough, she commanded an exceedingly good salary.......