Pensioners receiving home care services in Tranås have, in some cases, had to wait several hours for assistance to get to the bathroom during the night. According to staff reports, there have also been occasions when care recipients did not receive any of the supervision they were entitled to when the workload was at its highest.
The workload has been especially high during the summer. The night patrol is responsible for both scheduled check-in visits and emergency callouts when someone activates their safety alarm. During intense night shifts, staff can be faced with handling up to 80 different cases, while about 650 people in Tranås municipality have safety alarms.
“The alarms keep going off and alarms always come first, because we are alarm-driven,” an anonymous staff member told Tranås Tidning.
According to the staff member, 37 care recipients did not receive the help they were supposed to in June. The personnel describe how they regularly face difficult choices between various urgent interventions, where life-threatening situations and ambulance cases must be prioritized over scheduled visits.
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“We have had pensioners, or clients, who have not received any help at all because we didn’t have time to get there. If we had to wait for an ambulance or something else time-consuming, they have had to lie and desperately need to use the bathroom for 2.5 hours,” the source says.
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The high-pressure work situation has also clearly affected the staff. Employees testify to high stress and a constant sense of not being able to keep up, even as they try to maintain operations despite strained staffing levels.
The municipality’s night patrol was reduced from five to four staff members two years ago as part of municipal cost-saving measures.