Care leader slams media for not praising 'fantastic work' of care workers

The chief executive of Care England, Martin Green, has warned the media they must give care workers the same respect as NHS staff.

Speaking to an audience at the annual Care England conference, Martin Green said shows such as 24 Hours in A&E and GP’s: Behind Closed Doors create a positive impression of NHS staff, however, the media fails to produce such positive programmes for the hard-working staff in social care.

’We’ve got to start really respecting our colleagues’

Martin Green said: “The reality is the BBC and the plethora of other channels are not going to look at social care in the same way they look at the NHS, so in a way, we have to do some of that for ourselves.

“The other night I looked at the amount of what might be described as propaganda that’s in the media about the NHS.

"I saw GP’s behind closed doors, Inside the Ambulance, 24 hours in A&E, the list was endless. What those programmes do is they create an impression of the staff being in the health service. We are not seen in that context.”

“When you see what social care staff do, when you see the complexity of their work, the diversity of issues they deal with, physical issues and emotional issues, people don’t respect social care staff as professionals in the same way they respect other people particularly NHS staff as a professional. we’ve got to start really respecting our colleagues.”

Delegates at the Care England conference on 13 November, also heard Mr Green speak about the challenges of integration between social care and the NHS provider organisations.

'Holy grail of integration'

He said: “True integration is about the experience of people who use the service and if they feel they are getting what they need at the time they need it and that is happening in a seamless way that is the holy grail of integration.”

There was also a plea to be ‘sector neutral’. The chief executive said: "There is far too much obsession in this system as to whether or not it is public sector, charitable or private sector.

"Well let me tell you something, I speak for lots of people who use services and they never talk to me about the management structure they never talk to me about whether or not it’s the public sector or it’s a charity.

"They talk to me about the quality of the care, they talk to me about the interaction they have with the staff, they talk to me about the outcomes the services they have delivered and for us we need to remind ourselves that our role is delivering outcomes.

"It’s not posturing on political views about whether or not an organisation fits into one particular legal structure or another.”

’Much more individual personalised training’ needed

Technology was also on the agenda with Mr Green calling for the need for training and development to be flexible making it possible for staff to "dip in and out over the years" by developing their careers in different ways.

“We’ve got to align some of the training processes and some of the skills and competence’s framework.

"If we’re going to have staff that will move seamlessly across systems, we have got to have a proper career pathway that acknowledges so that we can go in and out of different bits of the system.

“Our roots to success are about focussing on the person we are training and playing to their strengths. Our workforce is diverse, so one size fits all training approach is not going to work."