Social Care Organisations fail to employ Learning Disabled

A survey of visitors at a Community Care Live event on Tuesday revealed that only one third of the social care organisations at the event employ people with a learning disability.

The survey was carried out by Avenues, a not-for-profit organisation that supports people with complex needs. It showed that 36% of visitors said they had people with a learning disability working at their organisation, 58% did not, 6% did not know.

9% thought their organisation had employed people with a learning disability in the past, and a number said their organisations did employ people with other disabilities, but not learning disabilities. Some claimed they had not had anyone with a learning disability apply, while others felt commercial firms such as supermarkets had a good track record in this area. A few were unsure what was meant by the term “learning disability"!

Avenues chief executive,Steve James said, “Avenues is proud to say it is in the one third of organisations that do employ people with learning disabilities. Our experience has shown that organisations have to be creative about the job opportunities they offer people with a learning disability and accept the fact that they may need quite a lot of support in the beginning. However the rewards, both for the employee with a learning disability and their colleagues, are worth the time and effort that goes in. I would strongly urge the social care sector to look at this area of recruitment. It would be a shame for social care organisations to be outdone by profit-making companies.”

Avenues is a not-for-profit organisation that provides support to people with complex needs, including learning disabilities, physical disabilities, autism and mental health problems. Our individualised support enables people to meet their needs and express their hopes and aspirations.

Avenues have over 900 staff supporting over 800 people every year, either in their own homes or in registered group homes. For more information about Avenues, visit: www.theavenuestrust.co.uk

CSCI star ratings

CSCI proposals for star ratings can be found here.

Plans by CSCI to develop a star rating system to judge care providers on how well they run their services were recently approved by CSCI Commissioners.
CSCI plans to invite people who use services, providers and councils to help them make sure the system is run properly and checked thoroughly by everyone involved.
A public consultation on star ratings was launched in August and nearly 3,000 people are reported to have supported the use of stars to describe ratings.

A survey of over 1,000 people found 96% want as much information as possible when making choices about services.
Dame Denise Platt said: “These new star ratings will be of significant benefit to people who use social care services, both now and in the future - so that they can make informed choices about the quality of care services in their area.”

CSCI will use a star ratings system ranging from 0-3 and use extra words such as poor, adequate, good and excellent to show what each star means.

Social Care Institute for Excellence

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.

Nutrition in Care Settings: problems in NHS.

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.

Submission To Carewatch: UK Social Care Issues

You are welcome to submit articles/ opinion pieces / news / comment on Health and Social Care and related issues to Carewatch: UK Social Care Issues.

Publication is at the sole discretion of the Editor. Where it is proposed that a contribution be edited before publication the edited version will be passed back to the Author before publication for approval. Authors retain copyright.

A word of encouragement to potential contributors:

Registered Social Work / Social Care Staff are increasingly expected to demonstrate their professional development and to contribute to the development of their profession.

While Carewatch: Social care Issues is not a full refereed professional journal it does provides an opportunity for Social Work and Social Care Staff to contribute to the debate on Social Work and Social Care. If you are a professional your contribution is welcome.

Social Care service users / relatives and others.
Contributions by non-professionals interested in Social Work and Social Care are also welcome.
Modern Social Work and Social Care are rightly focussed on listening to the voice of the users of Social Care Services and their carers. We welcome contributions from non-professionals.

How to contribute:

Please e-mail admin @ ournet.tv and make the subject of your e-mail "Carewatch submission".

Please state if you wish to be identified as the author and if so what details you wish published - if any.
You are welcome to make a submission directly or to e-mail to discuss your intended contribution.

Free resources for UK Care Providers

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.

Care Home Complaints:Scotland

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?