An entrepreneur who, as a child, needed a wheelchair and personally experienced many years of medical treatment is backing better rights for carers.
Josh Hough, CEO of CareLineLive, said home care staff deserve more support at work and access to effective digital tools.
Hough said it’s ridiculous many home care agency staff receive working rotas through the post and phone calls at home informing them about their upcoming working hours.
“Digital technology has revolutionised many industries but there’s a big part of the home care industry which has yet to fully embrace it,” said Hough.
“Better systems mean better care and we should be aiming to release home care staff from repetitive and frustrating tasks in order to enable them to spend more time doing the work that matters.”
His comments come as the UK celebrates Carers Rights Day this Thursday (November 21st).
Hough added: “There’s no reason staff should be receiving work rotas by post, or work-related telephone calls when they are at home. All of this can be avoided with better systems.
“Digital systems can make their work more efficient and avoid staff driving to and from the office in between visits to pick up paperwork. We need to move away from error prone handwritten notes and into systems where all information is available in an app.”
As a child, Hough received a lot of medical attention and care due to being born with a muscle weakening condition called Minicore Myopathy. He says his experiences shaped his view on how care can be best delivered.
He said paper-based systems can lead more easily to mistakes and wasted time and make life harder for both home care service users and carers.
“The last thing a service user wants is to endlessly repeat themselves and spend a lot of time educating carers and medical staff about their condition. All of this should be available to the carer in a secure document which they can access online.
“A lack of information places a lot of strain on carers, who can be thrown in at the deep end when they meet a new person to care for. They could do their job far more effectively, efficiently and with less stress if they were given access to a patient’s record in advance.
“This can all be solved with the right digital technology. Often, what’s best for the patient is best for the carer. We all benefit from rational, efficient systems.
“I hope that on Carers Rights Day we can focus on creating systems that are good for everyone.”
