News and Comment on Social care issues in the UK.
A useful link here to Social Care Online the website for the Social Care Institute for Excellence where you can access the UK's most complete range of information and research on all aspects of social care - for free.
30 August 2006
Health Minister Caroline Flint claimed yesterday that there is no excuse for pensioners starving on hospital wards when she admitted that some patients did suffer from malnutrition. She insists however that the problem is being tackled. Her comments came after Age Concern launched its Hungry to Help campaign.
Nine out of 10 nurses admitted they did not have time to help pensioners who needed help to eat and it has been estimated that almost 60 per cent of elderly patients are at risk of going hungry.
Undernourishment delays recovery and malnourished patients tend to stay in hospital longer. Age Concern estimates this costs the NHS an extra £7.3billion a year.
Mrs Flint said guidelines had been drawn up instructing staff how to help with nutrition. An autumn summit of nursing leaders is to discuss how to implement them.
She said on GMTV: "There is no excuse for people coming into our hospitals not being fed properly. I am afraid to say there are still places, probably too many, where this still happens."
The Royal College of Nursing spokeswoman Pauline Ford said Age Concern's findings proved wards were seriously understaffed. "For so many nurses, time has become a luxury. It is unacceptable if patients are not getting the help they need to eat or drink. Nurses desperately want to be able to give the standards of care they were trained to give but need the support and resources to do so. Most importantly, they need to be given the time to care." Liberal
Democrat health spokeswoman Sandra Gidley said it was due to frontline staff being overstretched and added; "All too often I hear of elderly patients who have had food placed in front of them with no one to help them eat it."
According to Gordon Lishman, director general of Age Concern ; "Hospitals are in danger of becoming bad for the health of older people. The majority of older patients are being denied some of the basic care they need, leaving hundreds of thousands of older patients malnourished. It is shocking that the dignity of patients is being overlooked and that Age Concern has to run a campaign to fight for the implementation of such simple measures. Food, and help with eating it, should be recognised by ward staff as an essential part of care and they should be given time to perform this task."
It is important to recognise though that this is not just a problem in NHS hospitals. In the Care Home sector there have also been problems identified with nutrition of residents. It is time that such fundamental aspects of care are given a much higher priority in all care settings. We cannot expect that people who are recieving care in any settng will enjoy either good health or a good quality of life if their basic human needs are not attended to.
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care Providers in the UK wanting to create or expand their web presence can now access a free resource. careprovider.21publish provides free web space for care homes and other care providers in the UK to publish information about their services or to place items of news and pictures about their service. There is no charge for the service which careprovider.21publish says it hopes will aid smaller care providers to expand their web prescence. they also have a compaion site careuser.21publish which can be used by users of care services and their carers and relatives to publish their comments on care services. Anyone wanting to try out these services can follow the links in this article. We think this is a good initiative and has the potential to aid the communication between care providers and their customers.
According to the Edinburgh Evening news over 170 complaints have been upheld against care homes in the Lothians, Scotland, by inspectors from the Care Commission who discovered multiple failings in scores of residential facilities.
Problems included poor hygiene, rooms smelling of urine for weeks on end and residents sleeping on dirty and stained mattresses . Some residents were routinely receiving "hot" meals that had been allowed to go cold and were left to live in dirty and ripped clothes.
There were examples of staff shortages, badly-trained care workers and an absence of meaningful activities for residents.
The complaints involved around five per cent of the Lothians' 2256 care homes.
The information was discovered by the Evening News using Freedom of Information laws.
In less than three years 174 complaints have been upheld, wholly or in part, against nursing homes in the Lothians.
One complaint was where elderly residents were being forced to get up at 6am to get dressed and ready for breakfast at 8am in order to suit staff shifts. In another there were concerns about the "inappropriate" terms used by staff to describe residents, such as "padders" and "hoisters" used to describe those who were incontinent or needed extra help to move around.
The inspectors also criticised inadequate communication with residents and their families in some homes.
An investigation into the death of 92-year-old resident Isabella McGregor from Ashley Court Nursing Home in Morningsiden February last year found unacceptable practices in 17 areas of basic care provided to often extremely frail residents. Inspectors found residents dishevelled and in a poor state of dress and restraint methods being used inappropriately on elderly residents.
The Care Commission ordered the home to take "urgent" action to improve or face losing registration and the home reportedly complied with all aspects of the improvement notice issued by the commission.
At Braid Hills Nursing Centre in Liberton - now under new ownership - inspectors found staff speaking of residents using inappropriate language. This included calling residents who were bed-ridden as "24seveners".
The statistics from the Lothians mirror a national trend where the number of complaints against Scotland's care homes and nurseries has increased by more than a quarter in the past year.
A number of questions arise from this but a key question is why it requires a Freedom of Information action to reveal this sort of information. Surely the results of complaints investigations should be released routinely perhaps as part of the Care Commissions reporting process?
Labels: Care Commission, Complaints, elderly care
Willy Roe, Chairman of the review, said: "Social work must change. We need to harness all our resources and expertise, across all sectors, to design services around the needs of people and shift focus from dealing with crises to prevention and early intervention."
The review comes against a backdrop of anxiety about child abuse cases, but aims to modernise all aspects of social work just as the Kilbrandon reforms resulted in the pioneering Social Work (Scotland) Act of 1968. Scotland's demographics have changed since Kilbrandon, the population has grown older, while drug abuse and social exclusion have resulted in more awareness of children at risk.
The review said the current model of social work delivery was "unsustainable" with staff working below their abilities, a one-size-fits-all approach and a lack of professional self-confidence.There was "overwhelming bureaucracy" which stopped them making the speedy decisions for those at riskand which was designed to protect staff by referring decisions upwards for approval.
One significant concern which the review has created is in relation to para-professionals. The new staff, akin to classroom assistants, would carry out basic duties, for example transporting children to family contact meetings or assessing the needs of old people, with the aim of allowing qualified social workers (QSWs) to focus on more complex casework.
The review found social workers' skills were being wasted "filing, ordering taxis, and filling in forms" and advocates a scheme already in use in Glasgow.
Christine Grahame, the SNP MSP who highlighted the social work failings in the Miss X case in the Borders, said: "We need people who can smell trouble on the front line, so I'm most concerned about para-professionals."I think it's to cover up the cracks and the fact they don't have enough social workers. Introducing para-professionals, whoever they are, means we have less qualified people on the front line and it could make matters worse, not better."
One senior council source wasquoted in the Scotsman as saying: "It's a missed opportunity. The executive is a one-trick pony. "It came up with these para-professionals for teaching and now it's doing it for social work. It's not impressive."
The paper also recommends social workers are kitted out with new gadgets such as Blackberrys, and includes a wealth of jargon, such as "accurate empathy" and "therapeutic genuineness".
Overall it was welcomed by professional bodies, councils and opposition parties, though on the assumption of adequate funding.
Peter Peacock, the education minister, said he had expected to be accused of offering "social work on the cheap", and strongly denied that suggestion."Meeting the modern-day needs in our society cannot fall to social workers alone, but their special skills are needed as part of complex care arrangements. The role of para-professionals can help relieve social workers of some of the tasks which don't necessarily occupy their full professional skills."
David Comley, director of social work services in Glasgow, said para-professionals had enabled his council to fill a 40% vacancy gap among social workers in two years.Glasgow now has two "social care workers" to each of its 350 qualified staff, and many of them are studying for social work qualifications themselves.
Recommendations
Services tailored to individuals
More early intervention
National priorities to clarify the social worker's role
Para-professionals to help ease workload on qualified workers
Explicit staff accountability
Stronger role for chief social work officer on councils
More learning from tough cases
More professional autonomy
Better career options and training
Budget and other decision-making devolved to the front line
More leadership training
Annual performance reports
National social work forum chaired by education minister
The government has launched a new drive to recruit more people to work in the "caring careers".
The Department of Health (DoH) said there was a growing interest in social work and social care jobs.
Its national recruitment information line received more than 160,000 calls since May 2002 - with 40,000 of these inquiries in 2005.
Seven out of 10 of those who asked about social care work had gained employment in the profession or were looking for a suitable vacancy. More than 4,000 people started the new social work degree in 2004 after it was launched three years ago.
The DoH said research showed a key obstacle to recruiting social workers and care staff was lack of public understanding about what they do.
TV, press and radio ads during February and March will aim to show the diversity of careers and the benefits to workers.
Care Services Minister Liam Byrne said: "The aim of our campaign is to make people think seriously about social work and social care as career options.
"The social care professions play a vital role in caring for vulnerable groups. Social care workers deal with a wide range of clients including young people, older people and people with physical and learning disabilities."
Recently the Government announced plans to register, train and vet more than 750,000 care workers in England who look after vulnerable older people, adults and children. It is hoped that registering care staff, in a similar way to social workers, and making sure they are properly trained will combat problems such as elder abuse.
Social care staff should be on a par with other health workers and entitled to the same professional status as nurses and other healthcare professionals, according to Clare Smith, director of HR at leading disablity disability charity Leonard
"This scheme will herald a major leap in the right direction in recognising the essential contribution that social care staff make to our society," said Smith. "But it needs to be part of a wider effort to make social care a genuine career choice for people across the UK."
"That professionalism must be recognised not only by registration, but by increased investment in the sector to help increase pay, by developing real career paths in social care and by recognising and publicising the incredible work performed by social care workers every day," she added.
We found an interesting report on www.ayrshireblog.blogspot.com about lenient sentencing of child abusers in a case in Scotland. The UK courts must show more seriousness in their sentencing of such criminals. People such as this destroy lives and it is important that the sentencing of child abusers reflects this.
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