COUNCIL chiefs have suspended 11 care companies from taking on more elderly people after concerns about their performance - but will not reveal who they are.

Three care homes - and eight different agencies offering personal ‘at home’ visits to pensioners - are on a Worcestershire County Council blacklist for “poor practice”.

It comes as the council came under fire from Unison for revealing it still operates controversial 15-minute time limits for the personal care callers.

County Hall has contracts with around 300 different outside care providers to help look after the growing numbers of vulnerable old people.

It monitors the care of each organisation and sometimes suspends them to new referrals until any problems are resolved, with the crucial services affecting 2,900 pensioners.

Despite requests from your Worcester News the council would not identify the care homes on the suspension list nor name any of the at-home agencies, saying it aims to “work with them to resolve the concerns”.

But the findings have alarmed older people, who want the authority to start naming and shaming the worst offenders.

Brian Hunt, 78, chairman of the Worcestershire Pensioners Action Group, said: “It’s a huge problem and it’s not going to go away.

“This is absolutely a concern, a care home is my destiny, I visit a lot of beautiful care homes but at £600-£700 a week, they are out of my league.

“I have to be honest, there’s all sorts of reasons why but I don’t think the Government has the money to sort it out.”

Fellow pensioner’s activist Paul Shirtliff, 81, of Tolladine Road, Worcester, said: “They should name and shame them so the public know about this.

“If the council find problems with these organisations they should dump them, pensioners have enough to worry about as it is.”

The council offers at-home personal care visits to around 1,600 elderly people and relies on 100 different contracted providers to keep the service running.

Bosses say of the domiciliary care providers eight on the blacklist, some are “fully suspended” from taking referrals while others are described as “restricted” as they make changes to improve.

In terms of actual care homes, over the last year the average is for eight to be suspended at any one time, with the current number down to three after several successfully came off the list.

There are 200 providers of residential and nursing care under council contract.

The findings have been put to the attention of the adult care and wellbeing overview and scrutiny panel.

Dr Richard Harling, the corporate director for health and wellbeing, said: “Seventy per cent of our providers are rated as good by the CQC (Care Quality Commission) and we have none judged ‘inadequate’ at the moment.

“I’m not saying it’s uniformly great, because it’s not, we have 11 suspended, but we’re above the national average.”

Unison says it has handed in Freedom of Information requests to 14 large West Midlands councils and found 12 of them, including Worcestershire, still have 15-minute time standards on at-home visits.

Dave Prentis, from Unison, said: “Rushed 15-minute home care visits should have no place in a modern, caring society.”

A county council spokesman said: “The council monitors the quality of care provided by external agencies and responds when concerns are raised.

“We are working with the providers concerned to resolve the problems identified.”