Allowing people to set up micro-businesses in the care sector could be one solution to Powys County Council’s problems recruiting home carers in the area.
Head of social services commissioning, Dylan Owen, has told the health and scrutiny committee he thought it could be the way forward.
This followed a question by Cllr Heulwen Hulme who said: “The micro-businesses that we’re possibly hoping to provide care in communities, how are we going to take that forward?”
Mr Owen answered: “We have a real issue with domiciliary care in the community we’re finding it very difficult as well as private agencies to recruit.
“We can’t wish up carers, so we’re trying to find different ways of accessing care support.”
Mr Owen said that some people who provide one off care to a friend or neighbour are paid directly, but would bot necessarily want to work as a full-time carer.
Mr Owen added: “Organisations such as Community Catalysts work in the community to help set people up as micro-enterprises.
“Then they can provide care for up to four people as a small company just working as a self-employed carer.
“We can work with those people and provide care through them.
“An organisation like Community Catalysts can support and enable them with setting up and accounts until they get to a point where they are self-sustaining.
“It’s really exciting it’s something we’re very keen about. We have got some people already doing this, a carer working in Knighton.”
Cllr Hulme added that PCC needed to be able to address the future needs of an ageing population.
Cllr Gareth Morgan (Liberal Democrats – Llanidloes) said that he thought it was a “superb idea” and showed a change of culture from PCC wanting to work with large national care companies to the smallest.
“We are going in the right direction,” said Cllr Morgan.
Head of Adult Services, Michael Gray, added that a similar scheme had been successful in another rural county, Somerset.
Mr Gray, added: “Community Catalyst worked with Somerset over two and a half years. As a result of that they developed 173 individuals to provide care supporting 700 older people.
“They now provide over 3,000 hours of care or support a week.”
Earlier this year, councillors had been told that working age people leaving the county was a high risk to PCC which had been first identified by adult services as it has an ageing workforce of carers and problems recruiting new staff.
By Elgan Hearn, Local Democracy Reporter
