Tag Archives: careworkers

“Reading the room” is a vital skill in politics. It is that knack of understanding, just clicking with an atmosphere or individual and knowing how to make a spontaneous pitch or knowing when to tone it down. Kwasi Kwarteng, with almost endearing under statement said in a recent interview that it was a skill that his old boss Liz Truss did not have.

If you are instinctive about reading the room you can make a lot of money in business or even in politics, but in low paid work like care (£21,000 a year if you are over 21, less if you are under 21) it is an essential part of your role. Yesterday I visited a residential home I know well. You cannot miss the atmosphere when you go in the door. It is warm, friendly, giggly even, with in-jokes and gentle humour. The care staff (not a single one of them, incidentally, British born) have an uncanny knack of pre-empting small mishaps and instinctively knowing when a vulnerable resident is not quite themselves.

What is also striking, as someone who had to use the NHS a lot two years ago, is that my friends working in care seem to have retained this extra something, what Lord Darzi, in his report, calls “discretionary effort” in a way that seems largely lost in the Health Service.

As an inpatient in the last 2 years I have experienced things that would have resulted in disciplinary action against a careworker:

• Shouted at by a nurse when I tried to use the “wrong” toilet on the ward.
• Blanked and ignored to my face by a doctor when I politely complained to him that I had been waiting five and a half hours in the ward prepped for an operation.
• Subjected, under general anaesthetic, to an intimate procedure conducted by a surgeon without specific consent. (This matter was investigated by the police and is now with the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman)

Not a single Lib Dem Voice reader will be surprised by this small list. All of you will have your own and have experienced worse.