I WHOLEHEARTEDLY welcome the Care Quality Commission’s national report on feedback from users of home-care services. It is reassuring to see that the CQC found that most providers were delivering a good service.

However, it is vital that the industry is stringently policed to ensure companies that are not meeting the necessary standards of quality and care are brought to book.

Treating all customers with dignity and respect should lie at the heart of every home-based care company.

Local authorities must take into account quality when commissioning services rather than basing decisions purely on cost.

Good-quality home care plays a vital role within healthcare, preventing people going into hospital unnecessarily or into a care home earlier than need be.

Glenn Pickersgill, Heritage Healthcare, Tower Court, Clifton Moor, York.

 

• IT WOULD be wrong to suggest that failings in domiciliary care provision do not exist – the evidence is there for all to see in the latest CQC report, Not Just A Number.

Nor would I deny that more work needs to be done to bring standards up.

But to always concentrate on the sector’s failings serves to mask the true picture.

The CQC’s report, on which the current publicity is based, does identify some examples of poor care. But it also reveals that 74 per cent of home care providers met the standards.

It also praises providers for delivering home care with “compassion that respects the dignity and rights of individuals” and notes the “significant number of positive comments from people who use homecare and their family, carers and relatives”.

Home care workers do a fantastic job, delivering social care to grateful clients in all weathers, 365 days a year. They do so in a sector that is woefully underfunded and at breaking point. And they deserve our respect for doing so.

Constant damning headlines will continue to lower morale and contribute to a worsening of standards rather than the improvement we all desire.

Mike Padgham, Chair, Independent Care Group (York and North Yorkshire), United Kingdom, Homecare Association.