NHS - plan to pay untrained people to care for surgical patients

Lets remember that most of the people having operations in this country (or acute medical admissions) are at the elderly end of the age spectrum.
Setting up Convalescent Homes under NHS would be very expensive. Care homes are full to bursting with those who need permanent care. This is looking to provide transitional care on the cheap.

I was like many people on here and initially though it was an awful idea until someone pointed it out that we happily allow foster carers for children. Surely if we had the same checks and procedures in place it could be do-able.

"CareRooms is a company focused on leveraging the rise of the sharing economy to solve some of the biggest problems in global healthcare."

The first sentence on their website under Who we Are.

Caring?

I thought it was a good idea until I read what was required of a host.

It would be a 12 hour shift, with cooking, cleaning, washing, bed-making, serving meals and offering companionship and alerting 'carers' if there was a problem. The problems might occur at 3am. Not only that, the patient is entitled to visitors so you'd be hosting them as well at all hours of the day or 'by arrangement' so there would be an admin element as well, not to mention wear and tear on the house and probably added insurance premiums. What if someone slipped in the shower. Would you leave them there until a professional arrived?

All that for £50. That's less than the minimum wage.

Bring back the convalescent homes/hospitals!!

I could take three patients in my spare room. There is a double bed so they would all have to turn over at the same time......

I do not think this is anything like fostering children. The scheme is for adults, many of them vulnerable elderly I suspect, who are recovering from illness or operations to be "cared for" by paid volunteers with no qualifications. Someone has already said if they are fit enough for discharge why not put in all the services at home? I suspect because paying £50 a day to unqualified volunteers is the cheapest option.

Just been discussing this issue with DD who probably would have been considered suitable for this Care B&B. She commented that none of the people putting forward this idea have thought about how the patient would feel in these circumstances.

She said that she would have felt awkward and uncomfortable being discharged to a strangers house. She was discharged hurriedly hours after a very large skin transplant. The skin transplanted came form a thigh and for the first week this would leak out of its dressing every night and soak the sheet and her night attire, she said being at home and having to get us up in the middle of the night to help her wash and change her clothes as well as change the bedclothes was one thing but to be in a strangers house and need to get them up at, say, 3.00 in the morning to do the same thing, would probably end up with her lying unsleeping for the rest of the night in soiled clothes in a soiled bed because she would not want to disturb them.

This is another of those schemes which is bully for those who think them up and profit from them but completely fails to consider the scheme from the patient's point of view. It would lead to more deaths and hospital re-admissions.

I really wouldn't want to put myself, or any relative of mine at the mercy of anyone who would undertake this work for £50. I wouldn't feel comfortable unless they were paid at least £250 for such care. You get what you pay for.

When you have a family to help you, there's no comparison really. Nothing beats family in these situations. Your daughter had you to help her, so I don't think she would have needed this sort of care. When you're recovering from a hospital stay it's difficult to improve on your Mum helping you out!

But if you were unable to help, if she lived alone, then perhaps that would be the sort of person the scheme could help.
If the choice was asking the host to help or doing it yourself (or not) every night, perhaps some people, not everyone, but some, would prefer it. It could be as simple as the reassurance of someone else being there.

As posters have already said, there are people who would make great temporary carers in this sort of situation.
I disagree about the money - £250 a day works out to around £55k a year - enough to attract people who are just in it for the money. I don't know if £50 is the right amount, but I'm pretty sure it's closer than £250.

DD does live alone and had we not been available, she would have been a prime candidate for this type of care. Not requiring hospital care but still needing 24 hour care and supervision as she could not cope on her own

The people who would take on this type of care will need to provide 24/7 care, whatever the organises may say about just providing 3 microwave meals and hydration. They may have to provide help with washing and dressing and will effectively be on duty 24/7 for any medical emergencies that may occur, like the problems DD had because if the people farmed out were capable of managing alone at home that is where they would be.

The £55,000 figure is misleading because £250 is a per night fee. No-one is going to be doing this 365 days a year, probably only a couple of days a week. £250 is approximately £10 an hour, fractionally above the minimum wage and 2 days a week is equivalent of a working week of 48 hours. £500 a week, allowing for 4 weeks holidays is £24,000 a year. Just below the national average income.

The £55k figure is based on 220 days a year, which is a standard way to annualise an income. If you think that's an unattractive salary, I disagree. Plenty of nurses would be happy to work from home for that, just caring for one patient (or two for £110k).
The Airbnb model has really disrupted the home rental market in areas like London and Barcelona. Lots of flats are now exclusively Airbnb. If you make the potential salary more attractive than nursing, it would really disrupt the NHS.

In my experience those deemed "fit for discharge" from hospital, can be far from fit, the motivating factor being pressure on beds, and will need a bit more input than respite in a guest house for a few days.
I realise this is a serious proposal but since listening to the News Quiz Radio 4 last evening can't get out of my head the vision of all the grandparents sharing a bed in Charlie & Chocolate Factory! lol.

Far better, as others have said, to bring back convalescent homes where patients are all in the same place, being cared for by trained staff and under at least some degree of 24-hour scrutiny. If convalescing patients are placed in private households scattered throughout a borough, the monitoring of care would inevitably be erratic as I feel quite sure it would be economically impractical for visits from inspectors to be carried out regularly enough to ensure safe and proper care.

This, in my opinion, is another example of privatisation by stealth.

Far better, as others have said, to bring back convalescent homes where patients are all in the same place, being cared for by trained staff and under at least some degree of 24-hour scrutiny. If convalescing patients are placed in private households scattered throughout a borough, the monitoring of care would inevitably be erratic as I feel quite sure it would be economically impractical for visits from inspectors to be carried out regularly enough to ensure safe and proper care.

This, in my opinion, is another example of privatisation by stealth.

Apologies for posting twice.

Think I have read that this idea has now been shelved, it was fraught with problems for all concerned.

A brilliant idea to have a convalescent home. Hospitals should be for acutely unwell people, there is so much bed blocking because patients aren’t quite fit enough to manage but really are not unwell enough anymore to need 24 hour nursing care.
This then leads to more people become more deconditioned and even less able because they allow and expect too much to be done for them.

I do not think there are lots of properties where the householder can offer an accessible bedroom with ensuite bathroom. That's what you get in a hotel along with room service or a chance to take the lift to the restaurant etc. I do't understand where the company are going to find the types of property and householders they seem to think they can recruit.

I suppose they think £50 a day is cheaper than the cost of a housekeeper about £750 per week, in the patient's own home helping them convalesce and regain their independence.

I dont know how true it is but I did hear that the NHS will pay up to a £1,000 per week for this - think of all the nurses that would be better off looking after a couple of people in their own home. We could have the beds but no nurses to look after the patients.

I think it depends on the needs of those needing the convalescent care. If you need help with toileting, washing, etc I definitely think a Convalescent Home with trained staff are the answer. If you just need help preparing food and company to ensure you are safe, then the scheme could work. It could be fraught with problems but with careful thought, I am sure many of those can be overcome. In the ideal world, children would not need to fostered and the elderly would be looked after by their families or the state could pay for good quality carers. However, having experienced what the state provides, it is pathetically inadequate and underfunded so it will take imaginative thinking to put it right and all ideas should be carefully considered even if they are not the ideal.

If you can fund out of hospital care, you can fund in hospital care.

I do not believe this ill conceived scheme will ever get off the ground. Southend Hospital has apparently stated they have no intention of taking part in the pilot as they do not want to compromise the safety and quality of care of their patients without safeguards being in place and until full engagement and consultation with communities. I agree with Primrose65 that nurses and particularly care workers would leave their posts in droves, for this sort of money, if they could "board" just one person in their home without the current stress and hard work in the private or NHS care/nursing system. The publicity around this scheme has highlighted the fact that the social care system in this country is in a state of collapse.

Hope you are watching Hunt on Andrew Marr?
"As a conservative, I believe that good public services are the moral purpose of a strong capitalist society."

He didn't look at all embarrassed when he said it!

Nan123, I think it was £1,000 a month. However the day rate of £50 is less than you would pay for a room and full board in a 3 star hotel, without care and supervsion..

Primrose 65. The 220 day annualisation is based on 35 - 40 hour week. Whatever may be said, this job would be a 24 hour day because the host would need to be on hand all the time to provide care or summon help all the time, so 2 days work = 48 hours. Considerably more hours than the standard working week.

The reason so many sheltered homes have lost their live in managers is because a court case, some years ago, decided that if the managers were on call outside their normal working hours that counted as working time and they were entitled to be paid for those hours. Any one subscribing to this system would be legally entitled to be paid for 24 hours a day.