More time for home care

The Kommunal and Vision municipal service unions commissioned a report that reveals how new arrangements for providing home care can benefit both staff and users. The report by the Forum for Health Policy describes the new approach taken in Skönsmon in the city of Sundsvall in central Sweden. Staff are given more responsibility for running the service, planning their working hours and ensuring that staffing levels are adequate. Managers have taken a step back but available to support and supervise their staff. The new system has led to less sick leave, lower staff turnover and reduced costs

Collective bargaining over the VVT nursing home and home care agreement will resume on 14 September following informal talks between the unions and employers over the summer period. Both sides think that there is now scope for an agreement with a key point being provisions on age-related working time to improve work-life balance. [Read more at > FNV Abvakabo (NL)->http://www.abvakabofnv.nl/nieuws/nieuws/werkgevers-zorg-acties] [And at > CNV Publieke Zaak (NL)->http://www.mijnvakbond.nl/VVT-bonden-hervatten-overleg?referrer=272] [And at > NU’91 (NL)->http://www.nu91-leden.nl/cao.asp?grp=5&uid

Trade unions, including FNV and NU'91, have agreed a set of guidelines on the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) for workers in nursing homes and those providing home care. This comes after union concern that existing guidance was unclear and created to confusion at the workplace. The unions and employers are also working together to ensure that there is sufficient PPE available not just to ensure that the guidance is applied in practice but also to provide for those workers who ask for PPE in other circumstances. Meanwhile in the central government sector negotiations on a new