16. Practice Guidance – Clinical Tasks
16.1 Clinical tasks will only be undertaken by care staff as part of a package which addresses other intimate personal care tasks that would normally be performed by a care worker.
16.2 Sometimes staff both in-house and those of the independent care providers are requested to perform tasks which will require additional training and which may have traditionally been performed by health personnel. There are important conditions attached to each category of task and because a task appears on a Category 1 or 2 list, it does not mean that the task will be performed automatically by a member of Gloucestershire County Council care staff and their contracted providers. CQC stress that care workers can refuse to perform a task they do not feel competent to perform.
16.3 The responsibility and accountability for all delegated health care tasks falling into category 2 remains with the health professional who is delegating the task to Gloucestershire County Council care staff or a contracted care provider. The health professional is responsible for ensuring that the G.C.C. care staff or contracted care provider is competent to undertake the delegated task by training them in the agreed competencies allotted to that task. If an incident should occur when the staff member is undertaking the task for which they were trained and is working to the agreed care plan and written procedures for that task, the liability rests with the PCT. If a GCC staff member or contracted care provider works outside the care plan and written procedures for that task or undertakes a task for which they are not trained and an incident occurs then that individual may be liable and GCC may commence disciplinary procedures.
16.4 GCC and contracted independent care provider staff are employed primarily to provide social care and should not undertake tasks which would normally be performed by trained nursing/medical personnel, even though some staff members might have nursing qualifications. There is no definition of what constitutes a nursing task but case law1 indicates that local authorities should not be performing invasive tasks as local authorities have no power to provide health care.
