The Improvement Hub (ihub), part of Healthcare Improvement Scotland, has been asked by COSLA to facilitate a session to help Health and Social Care Partnerships (H&SCPs); as a collective group, to generate ideas around alternatives to sleepovers.
The free workshop will be a whole day event held on Wednesday 1st of February 2017 at COSLA Building Verity House, 19 Haymarket Yards, Edinburgh EH12 5BH.
Sleepovers are a form of overnight support where the worker is sleeping/resting at their place of work ( the supported person’s home) but must be available to respond to the person’s needs during their shift.
Workshop aim:
This is an opportunity for participants to contribute to the development and redesign of the current approach to sleepovers, whilst maintaining safe, quality overnight support for the people who need it and making best use of the funding available.
Who should attend?
The event is open to Health & Social Care Partnership staff; social care providers and relevant intermediaries. It will be of most relevance to staff with experience of commissioning and delivering sleepovers and other forms of overnight support.
Please disseminate this as widely as possible within your organisation with these groups of staff and others who you feel it is of relevance to.
The learning from the event will be disseminated and shared with attendees, other partners and across H&SCPs.
To find out more and reserve your place:
Places are limited so please respond no later than the 20th of January to reserve your place.
Report on Scottish Care National Care Home Conference 2016
CEO of Scottish Care, Dr Donald Macaskill
Friday 18th November saw Scottish Care’s Annual Care Home Conference take place at the Hilton Hotel in Glasgow, attracting a record 480 delegates and over 80 exhibitors.
The theme for this year’s Conference was “Care Homes at the Heart”, with speakers exploring the place of care homes at the heart of their communities.
The Care Home Conference is the biggest and best attended event of its kind in Scotland, attracting a wide range of stakeholders including independent care sector organisations, Scottish Government, health and social care partnerships, regulatory bodies and private businesses.
You can listen to audio from Conference this year on our Soundcloud app below.
Conference began with a warm welcome from morning Chair Lord Sutherland, highlighting the sincere dedication and professionalism of those who work in the sector.
We then had a welcome from Conference Sponsor the Clydesdale Bank, represented by Derek Breingan, the head of Health and Social Care Sector UK. Mr Breingan told Conference:
“The care sector is incredibly important to the Scottish economy and plays a valuable role in communities across the country. Despite the challenges, care providers are investing, innovating and enhancing the services they provide to continue delivering excellent levels of care. Clydesdale Bank is delighted to be partnering with Scottish Care.”
Cabinet Secretary Shona Robison
The Cabinet Secretary for Health, Wellbeing & Sport Shona Robison addressed delegates, praising dedicated front line nursing staff as well as innovative practices and high quality care taking place across the sector in Scotland.
The Cabinet Secretary praised Scottish Care for the Voices from the Front Line Nursing Report and highlighted that she was committed to listening to the voices and views of the front line workforce.
Scottish Care CEO Dr Donald Macaskill officially launched the Voices from the Front Line Nursing Report along with front line nurse Nancyanne Smith. The report is based on interviews with 28 nurses working in the independent sector, and shares their joys, frustrations and aspirations in their roles through their own voices. It sets out 10 recommendations which Scottish Care hopes to progress in partnership with other organisations.
Nancyanne Smith & Dr Donald Macaskill launch Nursing from the Front Line Report
Professor Sir Lewis Ritchie gave an impassioned and moving speech about care homes at the heart of Primary Care, the need to work together in the sector and the need to ensure we are open to working together as well as moving forwards as a sector together. Sir Lewis Ritchie highlighted the “importance of good leadership and innovation within the social care sector”.
Christina West, Chief Officer of the Argyll & Bute Health and Social Care Partnership spoke about the need to contribute towards making high level integrated care a reality in addition to the importance of developing relationships in the sector based on shared ambition, values and culture.
You can listen to more audio from Conference this year on our Soundcloud app below.
https://soundcloud.com/user-403561181
Brand new for Conference were the Insight Sessions, a series of workshops which gave delegates the opportunity to attend a session of their choice. Insight Sessions were delivered by organisations including Alzheimer Scotland,Luminate which looked at the use of arts in care and NHS Education for Scotland looking at Infection Prevention. Scottish Care delivered two of the insight sessions, with Katharine Ross and Becca Gatherum leading the Workforce Matters session and Margaret McKeith delivering the Partners for Integration session.
Conference was treated to a public premiere and world first public viewing of a film created by the BAFTA award winning Scottish documentary maker, Duncan Cowles. ‘Directed by North Merchiston’ is series of five short films commissioned by Scottish Care which were made with residents at North Merchiston Care Home. You can watch previews of Duncan’s films at www.duncancowles.com/directed-by-north-merchiston
Dr Martin Wilson from Raigmore Hospital then gave a moving and engaging presentation on care homes at the heart of Palliative Care. Dr Wilson talked about assets in delivering palliative care as well as changing attitudes and perceptions through education about the need to prepare for requiring palliative care.
Rami Okasha and Kevin Mitchell of the Care Inspectorate
An interview with Rami Okasha and Kevin Mitchell from the Care Inspectorate saw Scottish Care’s Carlyn Miller lead with a series of questions to the panel regarding care homes at the heart of Human Rights based regulation in addition to the new National Care Standards.
Sally Loudon, Chief Executive of COSLA gave a presentation titled Care Homes at the Heart of Reform in which she told delegates that “we are all at a time of transformation and change” whilst also taking the opportunity to praise the long standing relationship between COSLA and Scottish Care.
Award winning poet Ken Cockburn presented an original poem to Conference entitled ‘Shared Stakes’ which he had written inspired by events of the day, taking inspiration from the themes, speakers and delegates of the day. You can read Ken’s poem here.
Final comments were given by Dr Donald Macaskill, who told Conference: “Sometimes change is not always welcome and reform is seen as uncomfortable but we have a real opportunity to shape the way we reform for the people who matter the most, which is not only those who provide services but those who use services.”
Ending on a note of togetherness and collaboration Dr Macaskill praised Conference by saying: “Today has been creative, it’s been about change and it’s been about challenge, that we all face together and will endure together. Thank you to everyone who has facilitated and led our insight sessions today, thank you to our delegates and exhibitors, thank you Conference.”
‘Trees that bend in the wind: Exploring the experiences of front line support workers delivering palliative and end of life care’
Wednesday 8 February 2017
10.30am – 2.00pm
The Renfield Centre, 260 Bath Street, Glasgow, G2 4HZ
Throughout November 2016 Scottish Care has been undertaking research with front line support workers within our member organisations exploring their experiences of palliative and end of life care (PEOLC). This is one part of a project being undertaken by Scottish Care, the purpose of which is to:
• Gain an understanding of the level and range of PEOLC support being delivered throughout the independent care sector, and any challenges associated with this delivery
• Identify the current skills, plus the training needs, of the front line care workforce in the independent sector
• Explore the emotional, psychological and spiritual impact on front line staff of delivering PEOLC
• Identify any recommendations which would better support PEOLC delivery within an integrated workforce environment
• Identify innovative and best practice around PEOLC provision within the independent sector
We had a tremendous amount of interest in this research from organisations and individuals, demonstrating both the relevance and importance of hearing the experiences and ideas of the expert workforce at the front line of social care in Scotland. We are currently writing a report on our findings which will be launched on Wednesday 8 February 2017.
Everybody who participated in the research has been invited to this event. However we anticipate being able to invite more Scottish Care members (including front line support workers) who are involved in the delivery of PEOLC, or are interested in this particular subject area.
To express interest in attending this event please contact Katharine Ross – National Workforce Development Lead – [email protected] before Friday 13th January 2017
We would hope to be able to confirm your place at this event the week beginning 16th January.
If you have any questions about these training opportunities please contact Thelma Mackie, Continence Secretary on Mon-Fri between 8.30a.m. – 10.00a.m. Tel Number – 01467 672748 or Extn 72748 or e-mail [email protected]
There are some fantastic resources on promoting continence for people living with dementia and long term conditions on the Care Inspectorate website. More information can be found here –
Please contact Katharine Ross – National Workforce Lead for Scottish Care – if you have any questions about these learning opportunities. [email protected]
National Care Standards Consultation Event for Scottish Care members
January 10, 2017 @ 10:30 am – 1:00 pm
Venue: Renfield St Stephens Centre, 260 Bath St, Glasgow G2 4JP
Please register your interest if you would like to attend this upcoming event which will provide an interactive opportunity to hear about the new National Care Standards from the Care Inspectorate, and to share your views on their development. Your comments will be used to inform Scottish Care’s response to this important consultation, which will shape what the final Care Standards look like when they are launched in 2017.
Henry Mathias from the Care Inspectorate will be in attendance to give a run-through of the Standards and there will be an opportunity to discuss the consultation on the day with Scottish Care.
If you are interested in this event or to book places, visit the Scottish Care website or contact [email protected]
Over Winter 2016, Scottish Care is undertaking a significant piece of research around palliative and end of life care. Through this, we will seek to:
• Gain an understanding of the level and range of palliative and end of life care support being delivered throughout the independent care sector, and any challenges associated with this delivery
• Identify the current skills, plus the training needs, of the front line care workforce in the independent sector
• Explore the emotional, psychological and spiritual impact on front line staff of delivering palliative and end of life care
• Identify any recommendations which would better support palliative and end of life care delivery within an integrated workforce environment
• Identify innovative and best practice around palliative and end of life care provision within the independent sector
This research will be undertaken in four ways:
• Focus groups with care home and care at home staff in four different geographical locations
• A survey for managers and organisations exploring approaches to palliative
and end of life care
• A collation of information around current projects, partnerships and initiatives
• An invitation for those working in palliative and end of life to make “This Speaks to Me” submissions (see sheet below)
Survey for managers and organisations:
We are requesting that those with managerial responsibility within organisations
(owners, managers and supervisors) undertake a short survey issued by Scottish Care. This survey focuses on areas around palliative and end of life care such as:
• Resourcing & commissioning
• Training
• Challenges & obstacles
• Staff support
• Organisational needs
The Christmas and New Year period mean different things to different folk. For me it’s an annual opportunity to engage in an ever failing effort to try to beat the quizzes in our newspapers. My competitive instinct comes to the fore when I convince myself (wrongly) that I really do know the name of Cruz Beckham’s first solo or the winning baker in the Great British Bake Off.
But it’s also a time of reflection, recollection and reconsideration.
2016 has been a busy and ‘interesting’ year. For me personally it’s seen the start of my role as CEO of Scottish Care and the start of these blogs on our new website. Looking back on them they have covered a wide range of topics. That is itself descriptive of the amazing scope of the independent care sector. But in the spirit of the season here are my Twelve Christmas words and wishes:
Nursing
Scottish Care has produced two nursing reports in the last two months. https://www.scottishcare.org/nursing/ . I am grateful they have been so well received and that we are seeing progress on their recommendations. I was privileged to conduct one of the interviews in the Voices report and that conversation has left a deep impression on me. It was with a dedicated nurse who was growing tired of workload pressures and the lack of value accorded to her role in caring for older people. She felt that others viewed her as ‘just a care home nurse’. So my Christmas wish would be for a society that values nurses who care for our older citizens wherever they work whether care home or an acute hospital ward.
Palliative Care.
I’ve personally spent a lot of time with people at the end of their life. There is a transparent truthfulness and honesty at such times and in such conversations. But the discussions I have had this year with frontline care staff show me that we aren’t giving enough time to paid carers to be with those who need simply to talk, to sit and be still, to have someone bandage up their fears as much as to attend to their physical pain. So my Christmas wish would be for a society that values those who sit and hold the hands of the dying by adequately resourcing their work.
Dementia
For me dementia has been a personal and professional concern. My mothers’ own journey with the disease came to an end this past year. Dementia takes over your living when it comes into your family; its rhythm is one which echoes emptiness where once there had been shared memory and story. But I also want to celebrate the capacity and contribution of those who live with dementia rather than, as some do, seeing people with dementia as a problem to be addressed. So my Christmas wish is that people will stop talking about dementia ‘sufferers’ and start celebrating dementia lives.
Human Rights
The beating heart of any society is the degree to which it speaks for the voiceless and recognises those on the margins. Human rights provide the language for such an articulation; they are the vocabulary that enables people to be treated and dealt with not out of sympathy or charity but as equal citizens of a community. So my wish for Christmas is that in Scotland we continue to challenge instances where the rights of our older citizens are minimised, ignored or suppressed. There is no use-by-date on one’s rights.
Living Wage
My first public words in my new role as Scottish Care CEO were a positive recognition of the decision to pay frontline care staff the Scottish Living Wage. Yes, it has been hard and at times a challenge to implement – but the positivity of giving people a wage by which their work of care is valued cannot be downplayed. So my Christmas wish is not only that we are able to build on what we have started and to improve the terms and conditions of carers, but that we work to create a society where those who care are accorded the greatest possible societal value and are awarded appropriate financial reward.
Care Home Reform
33,000 people live in our care homes and this year has reminded me of the astonishing brilliance of the care which is received by so many. But that care comes at a cost. The reform process which has occupied Scottish Care and our partners in the last few months, is seeking to build on existing best practice so that we create a care home sector fit for the future. So my Christmas wish is that Scotland has the courage to adequately fund the care of some of our most vulnerable citizens.
Fullness
The negative, limiting image of people living in residential care or in their own homes and receiving support is often wholly wrong. I have met countless individuals who aren’t simply waiting for their end to visit them but are striding out to own their futures, living with enthusiasm and energy in the face of illness and long-term conditions. Too often society constructs isolation and fosters loneliness by doing things that fail to include, engage and involve our older citizens. The lives of those in care homes and in their own homes are rich to overflowing with dreams still to be realised and contribution lying untapped. So my Christmas wish is that as a society we stay silent for just a second to ask and listen to what older people want from the Scotland that is their home and their future, and to learn what older people can give to the rest of us both now and tomorrow.
Age
Perhaps more than anything in the work I do I have become increasingly aware that we treat people differently based on an artificial number – usually 65, sometimes 70,
sometimes 80. I have written this year that the time is right to stop using language such as demographic ‘time bomb’, to stop subconsciously regretting longevity, and instead to seize the opportunities given by longer and healthier living. But I know that real discrimination happens daily for many of our older citizens, so my Christmas wish is that in 2017 civic society in Scotland will come together and work towards creating a legal framework that adequately protects the rights of older Scots.
Struggle
2016 has been a year of struggle for many of the providers who offer care services across Scotland. I have had too many conversations with individuals who have felt that the pressures of viability and unsustainability have become overwhelming. I have personally despaired of the system of competitive tendering of social care, especially in care at home services, which makes a mockery of dignity and is as far away from person centred care as the heavens are from the sea. So my Christmas wish is that collectively we find a way in which social care can be arranged which will banish forever the obscenity of 15 minute visits and enable small, often family run businesses not only survive but thrive in the giving of care.
Partnership
Partnership working, co-production and collaboration have almost become the buzzwords of the age. They speak to the potential of finding common cause, working together for the benefit of the person needing support and focusing on outcomes rather than systems. Where I have seen partnership work it has fostered remarkable innovation, enabled shared risk-taking and created mutual respect. But independent social care providers have struggled with being heard and represented not least in our Integrated Joint Boards where only 7 out of 31 have representation. So my Christmas wish is that in the reshaping of social care in Scotland we don’t just talk the talk but walk the walk of partnership and realise that partnership without presence is meaningless.
Celebrate
And my last word and wish is that over the next few months and year we all of us, whether we commission care, work in direct support, receive care, or simply talk about care – that we all of us work together to daily celebrate the good rather than talk up the negative; that we give space to hear stories of compassion and care beyond cost; that we influence our media to tell our nation of the thousands of individual acts which every day go unnoticed, unmentioned and unheralded – because that is in essence what happens across Scotland today and everyday.
This Christmas I for one want to thank the 98,000 workers who are the life-blood not only of the independent care sector but also of our communities.
Would you like to help shape the future of nursing in Scotland?
As you will be aware, a project is underway to develop a 2030 Vision for Nursing in Scotland.
As part of the consultation process, The Office of the Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) would like to meet with nurses working in care homes in the independent sector.
If you are a nurse or a student nurse working in an independent care home we would like to invite you to a focus group taking place on 9 February 2017 from 10.30 am – 12.00 noon at The Renfield Centre, 260 Bath Street, Glasgow, G2 4HZ.
The Scottish Government is looking for up to 20 nurses to take part in this discussion, which will help shape the image of the nursing profession and what it needs to look like by 2030.
For more information, or to confirm you would like to participate in this important focus group, please contact Katharine Ross on[email protected] – 07427 615880.
The new Scottish Social Services Awards are being launched to recognise and celebrate the work of the social services sector in Scotland and those that work in it.
It is run by the Social Work Services Strategic Forum, which launched a new shared vision and strategy for social services 2015-2020. The awards aim to highlight best practice and those individuals who are helping make a difference to the lives of the people they help and support.
Shortlisted entrants will be required to create a 1-2 minute promotional film of their story using smart phones. Help and support will be provided.
There will be ten award categories, reflecting the four work stands of the social services strategy. They are new, distinctive and aim to highlight work which creates a positive impact on the lives of others. You can enter as an individual, a team or an organisation, or you can nominate others.
The work strands and the categories are:
Supporting the workforce
Living the codes: to recognise success in bringing the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) codes of practice to life
Bright spark: for an individual who is new to social services but is already making a real difference to someone’s life
An enlightened approach: to recognise the importance of learning and development within the workforce
Understanding service quality and performance
Silo buster: to recognise joined up thinking, working and delivering during a time of integration and change
The courage to take a risk: for those who have taken a risk and stood up to make change with a positive outcome
Improving use of evidence
Making research real: to highlight good use of research in social services practice to challenge current thinking and explore new options
Thought leadership: for those who have influenced thinking in a team, organisation or more widely by learning, discussing or trying new things
Promoting public understanding
The untold story: to celebrate the unsung hero or inspiring individual who think they are just doing their job
Head above the parapet: for those who have spoken up about an issue, promoting social justice and championing the rights of the vulnerable
Policy Focus * special annual award
Carers champion: in recognition of the Carers Act to honour those who champion the rights and interests of carers
Full details of the awards will be launched on 16 January 2017 and will be open for six weeks, so start thinking now about work you might want to enter. Any individual, team, service or organisation across social care services can enter.
In the meantime, please register for updates at www.sssa.scot and follow @SSSawards on Twitter #sssa17.
Invitation to join the Scottish Care/SSSC Regulatory and Registration Forum
The next Scottish Care/SSSC Regulatory and Registration Forum will meet on Wednesday 11th January 2017 – 10.00am – 12.30pm at Four Seasons Health Care, 300 Springhill Parkway, Glasgow Business Park, Baillieston, Glasgow, G69 6GA.
If you would like to join this forum, please contact Katharine Ross – [email protected] We are always keen to welcome new members. Involvement will ensure you are up to date and informed of all regulatory and legislative expectations of social care providers, including post registration/PRTL requirements. We meet four times a year.
