Thin End of the Wedge: More Demands Upon Care Home Managers
Care England, the largest representative body for independent providers of adult social care, has expressed concern about the new burdens to be placed on care home managers.
Professor Martin Green OBE, Chief Executive of Care England says:
“Following a poorly drafted Impact Assessment that eventually accompanied the Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill on its passage through Parliament the Government agreed to re-write it. The second version of the Impact Assessment is full of loop holes and anomalies being open to chaos and confusion. The very suggestion that care home managers will need only half a day’s familiarisation training indicates just how out of touch the DHSC is”.
The Liberty Protection Safeguards (LPS) for example will be operated by a bewildering range of responsible bodies, in a far more complicated system than the one being replaced. There is also a very confused context for the proposed new work for care home managers; if the person is in a care home and aged 18 or over, the Local Authority must decide, essentially, whether an individual care home manager is ‘up to the job’: there is no clear information on how they will do this.
Care England in association with ARC, NCF, NCA, RHNA and VODG has today submitted comments to the DHSC Mental Capacity Bill Team on the Impact Assessment http://www.careengland.org.uk/publications-consultations
The DHSC Impact Assessment can be found at https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/2017-2019/0323/MCAB%20Impact%20Assessment%20FINAL.rtf%20SIGNED.pdf
Martin continues:
“The recent Impact Assessment claims that the LPS will reduce bureaucracy, simplify processes and lead to significant savings for Local Authorities to reinvest in care. The reality does not match the rhetoric because the new system has become too complex and will transfer responsibilities, duties and costs from local authorities to care home managers. This could be the thin end of the wedge and cause providers simply to shut up shop as they cannot absorb more burdens, especially ones that are so complex and confusing”.
