A wheelchair user has told of his concerns over the introduction of a new system that tracks how long carers spend with him.

Anthony – whose name we have changed – says Fife council threatened that his social care provider could be sacked if he wasn’t prepared to engage with the new time-logging technology. 

He says he receives “excellent” support from Capability Scotland six days a week but was told the charity would lose the contract if they didn’t use the app.

At least nine Scottish councils are using electronic call monitoring systems in a bid to manage costs, in some cases paying by the minute, healthandcare.scot reported yesterday. In one case a care worker who decided to wait with a man whose wife had just died was told they would not be paid for the extra time spent.

Fife council introduced an electronic call monitoring system in November 2018, although it only went live in June 2019 because of issues with payments. Some social care providers are reported to have stopped working with Fife as a result of the changes.

Anthony told healthandcare.scot: “Really the company and care is absolutely excellent, but actually it’s Fife council saying to Capability that if you don’t take this on, you are going to lose the package – it’s scaremongering from Fife council.                                               

“They have said to the manager of Capability, if you don’t take this system on, you will lose the contract and that is a pretty scary prospect for me.

“This was through the council themselves – they actually said, not to me directly but to family members, that if I wasn’t happy with the method of logging time then Capability would lose the contract.”

In a statement Capability Scotland confirmed using their chosen system, called Total Mobile, was a contractual requirement of Fife health and social care partnership.

healthandcare.scot has been told by other social care providers the new requirements are “causing a lot of problems” for carers and the people they support.

One manager said the approach is “very rigid” and people “don’t get a choice as to when and where they have their support”.

Fife has also brought in the Total Mobile technology to monitor care outside people’s homes.

Catherine Richardson’s son Daniel has autism and learning disabilities. Two days a week, support workers take him on the bus to a day centre and the gym.

They have to log in and out by scanning a card that Catherine has.

“Everything was working great before the cards,” she says, “and I’m not saying that everything is not working great now they’ve got the cards, but I just don’t agree with them getting pulled up because they’re half an hour early dropping the person off or they’re 20 minutes late because of public transport.

“The team that I’ve had, this is the second team I’ve had with Scottish Autism, and as I say they are great. It’s not their fault they’re early or late, I don’t have a problem with that.

“They should get paid whatever time they start to the time they finish.

“The carers do a great job, if they took the carers away my son wouldn’t go out without me… they need to just bin it and go back to how it was before.

“I’m trying to fight for more hours and I’m not getting it.”

Fiona McKay, head of strategic planning, performance and commissioning, said: “Fife’s Health and Social Care Partnership implemented the electronic monitoring system Total Mobile in-house in 2016 and the system is working extremely well.

“We recognise that some care providers have concerns with the new system and we have been working together to address these.

“The Total Mobile monitoring and scheduling systems allows us to track when and where care is delivered which is necessary for audit purposes.

“We are currently reviewing the payment element of the system and while we monitor and analyse the data from this, an interim measure has been put in place to pay for the commissioned hours.”

The providers' organisation, Scottish Care, says recommendations are being drawn up to address issues raised with the local Independent Sector Lead. In a statement they told healthandcare.scot:

'Fife Council have been working with both independent and third sector organisations to address a number of issues that have been experienced since the formal implementation and roll out of Total Mobile in early June 2019.

'A number of organisations have experienced increased workload in the administration and management of Total Mobile and expressed concerns in relation to both this and the use of the system for calculation of paid commissioned hours.

'In order to gain an experiential insight to the extent that Total Mobile has been having upon organisations, Fife Council has engaged in a series of planned workshops and is undertaking a review of Total Mobile which commenced in late January 2020. Scottish Care’s Independent Sector Lead has been capturing the responses received from organisations during the workshop processes and compiling emerging themes to support future recommendations that would support operational practices.'

In the meantime, Anthony says electronic call monitoring is causing him anxiety.

“Sometimes I have had carers who couldn’t log in to the system – the mobile handset they use hasn’t worked – and we have had to manually phone up Capability and tell them the carer has arrived.

“It makes me anxious that they are having to spend time trying to sort it out because they are getting stressed out as they are scared they aren’t getting paid.

“…Capability do their best and the carers are absolutely excellent – really and truly I know it’s not Capability themselves. It’s because the service is paid for by Fife council and it’s them who are stressing me out to a degree.”

 

healthandcare.scot is keen to hear experiences of electronic call monitoring systems, good or bad. Get in touch by email: editorial@healthandcare.scot