Batman actor's care experiences with mother show why standards must be raised: Tom Page

I set up my company, West Park Care, to support clients after I’d gone through the rigmarole that many my age are faced with when I had to look for support for my grandfather.

I was appalled at the standard of service and poor communication that seemed to be widespread across most at-home care providers and decided that I wanted to do it better. So, I knew exactly how Colin felt.

Gwendolyn had suffered from a host of health problems and as her movement and speech declined, she needed round-the-clock care at her home near Lincoln.

Before she died earlier this year, two care workers attended to her five times a day to help with general caring duties, physically help move her around and administer medication.

Subsequently, Colin was invited to contribute to a BBC TV programme about his family’s experience with social care.

So he rang me again as he wanted to speak to someone who was providing an excellent homecare service to get an insight into how social care for the elderly can be improved and more tailored to an individual family’s needs and carried out to a higher standard across the board.

His main questions were about how to employ staff, how to train staff, and how to develop and retain staff.

I explained to him that carer pay is often poor. We offer permanent salaried contracts – which is highly unusual in our sector as most are on zero-hour contracts - and we pay £12 to £14 per hour which is well above the industry norm at £9-10 per hour.

But pay alone does not attract good people.

Being a carer is hard work and they often work alone, do a lot of driving and ultimately, they are responsible for vulnerable people.

I told him about our extensive training schemes and how we promote from within and support those who want to progress their careers with us. We value all our staff in everything we do and do what we can to keep good people.

I told him, for us, staff retention is just as important as recruitment and as well as career progression, and we offer incentives and reward schemes to all our employees. As a result, our employee turnover is around 10 per cent compared to the industry average which is 45 per cent.

At the end of our call, Colin said to me “You’ve restored my faith that high-quality at- home care is possible and staff can be valued and properly rewarded. Building those relationships between carers and families is so important. We need more people to run care like you, Tom, so from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

“I hope what you’re doing inspires other care companies across the country to raise their standards.”

Tom Page is Managing Director at West Park Care