A CARE company working in Saddleworth that encourages its staff to treat clients ‘as if they were family’ has been nominated for a major innovation honour.
Visiting Angels prides itself on delivering such a dedicated service to people with needs including disabilities, dementia and terminal illness, it even allows the person being cared for to interview and vet their carer.
It sees that as vital for people from diverse communities, who sometimes feel ashamed they need looking after.
Its carer-centric approach to its staff means employees are the only ones in the sector to have an annual pay rise and a career path planned for them – even their cars are serviced regularly for free.
And that has seen the Oldham-based firm’s Roxie Taj, who delivers care throughout Saddleworth and is able to match clients to carers from many diverse groups, nominated in the Care Innovator category of the Great British Care Awards, which means a date at Birmingham’s International Conference Centre on March 22 with presenter Rylan Clark.
It will recognise the person who has shown exceptional entrepreneurial skills in identifying, developing, implementing and establishing a new service or administrative system or launching a new product.
“Our ambition for the franchise is to be the care employer of choice by 2030, one which everyone wants to work for” said Visiting Angels’ managing director Roxie.
“These two things go together. It is all about building a relationship with your client and that can only be achieved with time and familiarity.
“Just as Asian people have uncles and aunties in their community who are not blood relatives, we want them to be like another member of the family – as far as professionalism will allow.”
Visiting Angels – set up in October 2022 – says the social care system in Britain has endured a huge crisis, before and during the Covid-19 pandemic.
There are still 152,000 unfilled vacancies in the profession and the turnover rate for staff is almost twice the national average.
And the company aims to use the award nomination to continue with its carer-centric approach to make caring and carers count – with both Roxie and fellow founder Badar Usmani seeing them as, ‘the original front-line workers before medical professionals.’
Badar said: “It is bizarre how while older people slowdown in their lives, councils expect their carers to speed up.
“It often boils down to a care assessor looking at a client’s needs and believing carers are only there to give out medication and check things are OK.
“They think that can be as little as 15 minutes work but sometimes it can take 15 to just get the person ‘with it.’
“Furthermore, ‘companionship’ doesn’t exist in the councils’ dictionary.
“High volume care is commissioned to ‘cheaper’ providers who then offload on to carers with back-to-back client calls and minimum wage.
“Carers are given little, or no travel time and mileage is not paid. So, a carer could be out for six hours but only paid for four ‘working’ hours.
“Consequently, good carers are forced to adopt bad habits resulting in the public perception of care as bad overall.
“It should be about establishing trust, confidence, and relationships, not who can finish first.
“Visiting Angels delivers a minimum one-hour visit and place a greater value on the benefit of companionship. We will collaborate with local councils if they raise their standards to ours, which means providing the resource to help us pay higher wages and improve our retention.”
