Care agencies 'must ensure recruits can speak English'

[annie]

This is not before time!!  don't they get an interview prior to recruitment? It should be blindingly obvious if they can barely speak English & should not be employed -yet it still happened frequently!!

Agencies should ensure people recruited as carers can speak English before placing them in vulnerable people's homes, a government adviser has said.

Dr Shereen Hussein, scientific adviser to the Department of Health, told BBC Radio 5 live that poor language skills could lead to bad care and abuse.

King's College London says that 20% of carers are migrant workers.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-27295554

Care minister Norman Lamb said communication skills would be required for the new Care Certificate.

The brother of one dementia sufferer told the BBC his carers struggled to communicate.

[JaneJ]

You would think that speaking the language would be number one on the list!

It must be difficult enough if you are hard of hearing when you get thick accents let alone a complete language barrier.

  go90

[maureenho]

This is long overdue, I have in my time when dealing with so called care agency worker spent far to much time trying to communicate and make the simplest of things be understood which is not good when they are supposed to be caring for someone very poorly,  there is one particular Nationality that is worse than the others in my experience, the word 'Hankerchief' is alien to most foreign care workers.

I could tell you things I've experienced from non English speaking care workers that would shock you.

[debzsanderson]

This makes me so happy that something is finally being done! We have had so many carers that had terrible language skills. I also find that agencies employ a lot of carers from places like Romania where they have no experience of this work as their culture look after their relatives and care agencies don't exist.