AGENCY SOCIAL CARE WORKERS

That this House is aware of the many agency social care workers who regularly drive to their patients' homes within communities; acknowledges that their jobs include such tasks as moving patients, handling them with hoists and other equipment, dealing with many varied physical disabilities including incontinence, Alzheimer's disease and many other dementia-related illnesses and care of the dying; is aware that to carry this out they have to undergo educational training in social care and practice, emergency procedures, fire, health and safety, basic food hygiene, dementia care, diabetes, abuse awareness, palliative care and a Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check with their employers; is concerned that such care workers are required to pay for a CRB check each time they change jobs within the industry rather than on an annual basis and have also to register with two separate bodies at a joint cost of £64 before being allowed to work in this sector; and believes that such overcharging practices should cease immediately and that ways should be found by the Government to charge lower annual road tax rates to this group of professionals whose work is imperative to the health, wellbeing and lifestyles of the people they serve.