Home care visits to thousands of older people are being limited to just five minutes, an investigation by the Daily Mail has found.
Freedom of information requests made by the newspaper revealed that 72 out of the 103 councils in England that provided data used 15-minute slots in 2012/13, accounting for 1.8million visits.
Care staff told the Mail many of these appointments only last five or ten minutes because they include travel time.
Six of the councils actively commissioned five-minute care visits in the same period, which were chiefly provided by private firms. These were Bury, Derbyshire, Dudley, Leicestershire and North Lincoln.
In response to the findings, care minister Norman Lamb said: “It is totally inappropriate and unacceptable for frail elderly people and those with disabilities to receive care visits to address their personal needs in this sort of time.
“It is just fanciful to think that elderly people can be provided with compassionate and kind care in this sort of time slot.”
Central government cuts in social care spending for older people has fallen by over £1billion since 2011 – from £9.95billion to £8.85billion last year.
Some home care providers say it is these spending cuts that are threatening the quality of services, particularly for people with dementia.
Managing director of Right at Home, Ken Deary, commented: “Charities such as Age UK and the Alzheimer’s Society will tell you that longer duration person-centred home care can have a huge impact in helping to stabilise people’s conditions and improve their quality of life.
“But it is now all but impossible to deliver those standards of service using local authority funding alone. This means the majority of people must either top up their budgets, as they do with Right at Home and other quality care providers, or put up with standards of care that do not meet their needs and too often leave them often treated without the dignity and respect they are entitled to; and at worst at serious risk.”
Deary concluded: “The Government has got to revise its care funding strategy and give this the attention it urgently needs in order to support vulnerable adults with longer unrushed visit times that provide quality dignified care.”
