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Social Care LINGs

 A social care LING’s function is to network persons needing paid social care or support and their carers with those wishing to be employed to provide such care and support.

        The core administration of a social care LING has:

1. a Board of Trustees drawn from local business people with a track record of voluntary work in their community. Also on the board will be co-opted representatives for those needing paid care, for their carers, for the care and support workers and for the LING’s volunteers if a volunteer group is formed.

2. a small clerical staff who administer payments between those employing the workers and the workers and deal with employment paperwork, receive direct payments on behalf of taxpayer-funded individuals, deal with legal and insurance employment matters, organise interview panels and references and checks on new workers joining the LING.

3. An interactive website.

        Through the LING and its website persons needing paid social care or support and their carers will have access to a pool of care and support workers, and the workers will have access to a group of people wanting to employ them. Each group can advertise their requirements and use such parts of the administrative services as they require.

        It is anticipated that the good reputation of the LING amongst care and support workers and their involvement in any wider activities of the LING will reduce recruitment costs and worker turnover.

        Such savings and no profit to be made by a commercial company should reduce costs to persons needing paid social care or support and their carers, and provide better rates of pay and conditions for those employed.

        Funding of a social care LING will be a mixture of payments for services, donations and volunteered time and energy.

      A social care LING can have a variety of ‘add-ons’. Some suggestions are mentioned in Integrated Care: A discussion document Appendix 4, Part 1 (p15).

A network of LINGs might open ways of improving matters in some areas which are too taboo to discuss easily. Two such examples are briefly outlined in Integrated Care: A discussion document Part 2 of Appendix 4 (pp16/17).

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