BBC Radio 5 reported today on calls for better communication skills from care workers.
Dr Hussein from King’s College London’s Social Care Workforce Research Unit has said that too many care workers have a poor grasp of English. She explained that there are too many migrant workers in the sector whose lack of English puts people using care services at risk.
Care minister Norman Lamb agreed, saying “For people to get the care they want they need to be able to communicate with their care workers”.
We agree with these statements. We’ve seen numerous cases where older people struggle to communicate with their care workers, irrespective of where the care is delivered. This is why 93% of our care workers speak English as their first language and we ensured the remaining 7% had a fluent level of English prior to recruiting them.
