Highland Council reassures home carers

The Highland Council’s Chairman of Housing and Social Work has reassured around 685 home carers working in the Highlands that the Council does not anticipate redundancies in its home care service.

Councillor Margaret Davidson said: “We have ambitious plans to modernise our Care at Home Services to provide more care to our elderly at home, particularly at evening, overnight and at weekends. Our home carers do a great job and we are now offering new and improved terms and conditions, meaning guaranteed hours, better pay and more support, and opportunities for promotion. We do not anticipate any redundancies. If staff wish to stay on their existing terms and conditions, they can do so.

“The Council has a transition plan in place to ensure consistency and continuous delivery of the service throughout this period. Once the changes have been made at each location, the delivery of care to clients will be more robust, consistent from an identified team of carers and more flexible to meet service users needs.

“In more remote and rural areas where we have difficulty recruiting staff we anticipate that the much improved terms and conditions of fixed working hours and patterns, training, increased pay and better support will attract a wider range of potential employees. Access to home care will be more widely available than at present and further changes within the service will mean that service users will have a single point of contact for all their care at home services, whether they are from the Council, independently purchased or delivered through telecare.

“We have distributed newsletters to the home carers keeping them informed and staff are being consulted during the next two weeks. Unions have also been consulted and will be met with regularly over the next few months. Initial discussions with staff across Highland have indicated that while this is a time of change bringing understandable anxiety, the reasons are sound and will ultimately prove for the better for all concerned.
 
“I have had assurance from the Director of Social Work, Harriet Dempster that if any home carer has any anxieties that they contact her directly as she is happy to speak to them personally.”

The Council’s latest care at home figures show that around 685 carers deliver 9,851 hours of care to 1,789 people over the age of 65 in the Highlands.