Fifteen-minute home visits and the quest to improve care

摘要

NICE is adamant that home care visits to people such as the elderly should last for at least half an hour and should be positioned around a personalised care plan rather than a prescriptive corporate service (NICE, 2015).In 2011/12 517000 people in England made use of home care support funded by their local authorities. Of these people, 80% were aged 65 or older. Just over half of local authorities' social care expenditure was on people aged 65 and older. The independent sector provides 89% of home care services, often working under contract to local authorities. Importantly, NICE (2014) has shown that an increasing number of people using home care services have dementia and that people who live alone may be highly dependent on the reliability of these services.