“Doesn’t using agency locum staff cost a fortune?”
Many people think that locum staff are an expensive option. However, the reality is that purchasing your Rehabilitation services through PrioritEyes Ltd could result in a significant saving to your department.
The current upfront and ongoing costs when employing a permanent Rehabilitation Worker include:
- Salary, including holiday and sickness pay
- Employers National Insurance
- Pension Scheme
- Advertising / Recruitment / Interviewing Costs
- HR Costs (ie contracts, payroll, up-to-date disclosures, etc)
- Training costs
- Possible maternity/adoption pay, parental leave
- Possible redundancy costs
- Cost of additional cover if employee absent on long-term sick leave or maternity/parental leave
Purchasing Rehabilitation services through PrioritEyes Ltd can significantly reduce costs to your Department, as you only pay for the hours worked. We deal with our employee’s salaries, PAYE and NI, benefits and all other on-costs (ie employee contracts, up-to-date disclosures, payroll, training, holidays etc). Should any member of our team take sick leave or maternity/adoption leave we can provide another highly experienced, qualified member of our team at no extra cost.
We also offer professional supervision and mentoring with our in-house Senior Practitioner.
“Extra rehab would be great, but our department has to cut costs”
Good vision rehabilitation makes economic sense: research commissioned by RNIB and published in August 2017 demonstrates Local Authorities can make annual savings of over £3 million pounds by providing good quality vision rehabilitation support to people with sight loss.
Under the Care Act (2014), all English local authorities have a duty to provide vision rehabilitation support for blind and partially sighted people.
The research is part of RNIB’s “See, Plan and Provide” campaign, calling for improved access to vision rehabilitation services. It analysed Surrey Council’s vision rehabilitation service, provided by the charity Sight for Surrey.
The total costs avoided as a result of Sight for Surrey’s vision rehabilitation service were more than £3.4million a year. Of this, services costing £3.2million would have fallen to the local authority or social care to pay. This included paying for home care, visits to Accident and Emergency or a GP, and transport costs.
Service users, families and carers also benefitted, avoiding, reducing or deferring costs of £260,000 a year due to reduced care commitments.
Margaret Willcox, President of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS), said: “At a time when social care budgets are under such intense pressure nationally, we welcome this research into the personal and system-wide benefits of vision rehabilitation.
The research shows that timely and appropriate support for people with sight loss improves the wellbeing of individuals and their families, as well as preventing needs from escalating. This reduces pressure on a number of health and social care services, at a time when they are struggling to cope with constrained budgets and growing demand.
For further information
Read the report: Demonstrating the impact and value of vision rehabilitation
Find out more about the RNIB See, Plan and Provide campaign
Did you know……?
- In 2015 there were over 2 million people in the UK living with sight loss
- In the year after registration, fewer than 30 per cent of people with sight loss say they were offered mobility training to help them get around independently.
- Almost half of blind and partially sighted people feel ‘moderately’ or ‘completely’ cut off from people and things around them.
- PrioritEyes has provided rehab services in 18 London Boroughs and the City of London
- Older people with sight loss are almost three times more likely to experience depression than people with good vision.
- Only one in four registered blind and partially sighted people of working age are in employment.
- Smokers are up to 4 times more likely to develop macular degeneration compared to past smokers or non-smokers