Will you laugh or cry after reading the article Telecare scheme branded ‘waste of money’ from the Lancashire Evening Telegraph?
You might laugh in disbelief. If the county council has not been able to persuade the leaders of the district councils within its jurisdiction of the value of a preventative approach that will improve independent living for their constituents, how will it be able to persuade social workers to promote the service convincingly?
Or will you cry because it seems like another sign (*) that the promotion of telecare in England is coming off the rails? It’s something that many feared might happen, right from the announcement of the Preventative Technology Grant conditions.
Read the article and leave a comment with your reaction.
Overnight since posting this item I have had some comments sent to me privately that I thought deserved a wider airing, but I am respecting needs of the various authors to remain anonymous. (Actually, it should be possible to post anonymous comments, just don’t fill in the name, email or web site boxes.)
“It demonstrates a clear misunderstanding of what telecare is and how it is best used, but also I am not too disheartened as I know that most of their equipment is by a certain company who have been using aggressive marketing techniques, and someone has smelt a rat. Shame though…”
“Well, I don’t know about ‘laugh or cry’ – rather it makes my blood boil.”
“This article sums up exactly what is going on with many councils. The social workers and OTs are very difficult to get on side, they’re just happy to do what they’ve always been doing. They look at the telecare training days as a holiday … a lot attend to skive and have no real interest in taking in what’s being said.”
I suspect the article is not representative of the real situation in Lancashire currently but is somewhat inflated and sensationalised for the media audeince. I also suspect if things are as reported that this could be due to trying to impose telecare too rapidly and not meeting and negotiating through resisitance. In the London Borough of Barnet, telecare is being phased in slowly deliberately to avoid issues such as those in the article. I would also suspect that Lancashire have many posiitve aspects to their service provision which are not addressed in the piece.
Guy
Just for the record I beleive the equipment provision is split equally between the two major suppliers . Ivan lewis and others said some very positive things about telecare yesterday -see kabelnet.
Hi Charles, I believe this is the kabelnet item you refer to:
Telecare to deal with dementia. I hadn’t got round to posting it yet.
It’s good that telecare has such a high profile with the Minister and, of course, Jenny Owen has had experience with telecare in Essex. However, given DH’s track record on the production of successful policies lately…
Why is there never anything on hearing impairment on these pages?
it feels as though those struggling to hear have been left out of this agenda.
Look forward to your reply
You are right, Rosie.
I do get the feeling that issues of telecare and people with all sensory impairments are generally being ignored or glossed over by suppliers and commentators. If you would like to write a ‘Telecare Soapbox’ item about it from a telecare user or potential user perspective, I will be happy to publish it.