Many Swedish municipalities will not be able to live up to the new requirement for a fixed care contact in home care. This is shown by TV4 Nyheterna’s large survey.
From the first of July, those who have home care must be guaranteed an assistant nurse as contact person, something every third municipality cannot promise.
– They must have a higher salary and a better work schedule, says Karin Holmquist, 88 years old.
After a stroke, she needs help several times a day and estimates, with the help of her partner, the number of different home care staff who visit her during a week at around 20.
– You never know where to turn, she says. And there are so many strange rules about everything possible, which you don’t understand.
The requirement for a permanent care contact in the home service was already introduced last year, but was tightened on July 1 in such a way that it must be a permanent employee with the professional title of assistant nurse. But when TV4 Nyheterna asks the country’s municipalities, just under two-thirds of the 171 respondents say they can comply with the law. Many are unsure or answer like Gothenburg: they need more time.
Hard-to-recruit group
– A permanent care contact in the home service must be a nurse. And it’s a hard-to-recruit group, says Monika Bondesson, head of department for home care in the city of Gothenburg.
– At the moment, I cannot answer how long it will take. Because this is part of the challenge we have with the welfare challenge – that we are becoming more elderly and less of working age.
Karin Holmquist thinks that the conditions for the employees must be improved:
– They must have a higher salary and a better work schedule, she says. It is forced. There are no young people that I know who apply.