An article about the registration starting soon of domiciliary care staff (carers contracted by Adult Social Care departments to me and you), claims that GSCC is not a paper tiger – well, it’s a bit too soon to say really – but how much more work they’ll have to do when all carers are registered.

One of the difficulties not mentioned is how personal the relationship becomes between some regular carers and their care-receiver; it really is up close and personal, and bureaucratising it is not going to be easy and might interfere with the quality of many good relationships. It’s not so obvious to care-receivers and families that these people are professionals as it is with social workers, nurses and so on; the essence of it is the personal care. This has been widely expressed around the issue of personal assistants employed through direct budgets, whose employers have been keen to say ‘no, thanks’ to registration, but applies to this much wider group of carers who are being taken onto a register with very little forethought.
I wonder who’s paying for the very glossy, and a bit insubstantial, SCLondon magazine? And why? I think we should be told.

White, M. (2008) Not a paper tiger. SCLondon 1(5): June 2005: 8-10.

Pics of the rebuilding at St Christopher’s, now under way, in solidarity with all colleagues working through a difficult time, to make things better in the future:
Cones alone