What are the qualities we need for a functioning care and support workforce?

When you think about almost any of the many distressing cases of care failings or abuse in health and social care, you usually end up wondering why such an unsuitable practitioner or perpetrator was ever allowed to do the job in the first place.

As a journalist, such cases crossed my radar with monotonous regularity. From the Mid Staffs NHS scandal to Winterbourne View, I was puzzled time and time again not just by how the clinicians or care workers directly responsible had done what they did, or had not done what they ought to have done, but also by how others around them had not thought to intervene.

In contrast, and of course happily much more often, we all witness skilful, patient, compassionate care. As chair of a charity that provides care and support to people with learning disabilities, autism or mental health challenges, and to older people, I see the most humbling acts of sheer humanity by workers to whom we are able to pay little more than minimum wage.

Wouldn’t it be a fine thing if we could build a care and support workforce composed entirely of the latter type of person and none of the former? Dream on, I hear you say. But couldn’t we at least experiment with a way or ways of bringing in more of the latter and screening out more of the former.

I see the most humbling acts of sheer humanity by workers to whom we are able to pay little more than minimum wage

This is where Kaleidoscope’s What Unites Us? competition comes in and why I’m delighted to be helping to judge it. By stimulating thought and debate on the qualities that health and care workers need, through the lens of a proposed three-question preliminary interview undertaken by all job candidates, it could really help move us along that positive path.

It goes without saying that we should expect proficiency in those we entrust to care for us. We look to regulators of the various professions to set entry criteria and administer periodic revalidation. One day soon, some of us hope this will extend to social care workers. The Care Quality Commission further checks that services in England are safe, effective, responsive, well-led – and caring – but its resources are thinly spread, leaving its inspectors unable to visit most services routinely.

So what are the essential qualities that we might look for in an initial interview and probe via the three questions? People will have different ideas, but for my money kindness is a non-negotiable. And it’s not something that is always evident to the end user: in a survey in 2018, only 42% of patients said they ‘strongly experienced’ kindness at their GP service, while just 22% of service users said the same about social care.

That survey was conducted by the Carnegie UK Trust for Julia Unwin’s excellent research study called Kindness, Emotions and Human Relationships – the Blind Spot in Public Services. A blind spot, perhaps, but is it in truth nothing much more than a soft nice-to-have, especially in cash-strapped times?

Far from it, Unwin argues. Kindness is disruptive. “It changes the relationships between people and inevitably demands a change in the relationships between people and institutions and organisations.” Quite so. Let’s talk about it.

David is a leading social care commentator and former public services editor of The Guardian, where he won a number of awards for his journalism on health and social care and the voluntary sector. He is also one of the judges for the ‘What Unites Us?’ prize.

Find out more and enter the ‘What Unites Us?’ prize – entries close on 31 October.