We were delighted to welcome Prof Jason Leitch and Dr Syed Ahmed to our open webinar on Covid-19 Vaccination yesterday afternoon.
Huge thanks to Prof Leitch and Dr Ahmed for joining us and answering the questions from the audience. And thanks to the over 300 individuals who joined us for this informative session, we hope you have found it useful.
A recording of this webinar is now available below. We have also collated the questions asked and will upload a FAQ document when it’s ready.
Please see below for letter from Ray de Souza (National Adviser, Workforce Wellbeing Leadership, Culture and Wellbeing, Health Workforce Directorate, Scottish Government) with new posters promoting the national wellbeing support provision, notably the National Wellbeing Hub and the National Helpline, for all Health and Social Care staff.
Circulation
One of the UK’s leading providers of digital care technology is increasing connectivity and collaboration in care homes north of the border – putting Scotland at the forefront of digitalisation in social care.
Care providers in Scotland are more connected than ever thanks to Person Centred Software’s Mobile Care Monitoring system, which allows staff to digitally plan, record and monitor the care of residents in real-time.
The mobile digital care system helps to reduce the time it would take to physically transcribe care notes as staff can record information at the point of care, while also mitigating the risk of errors through innovative icon-driven tools. In addition, the risk of losing information is eliminated as all data is recorded in one central portal, which can be viewed anytime by anyone with access.
NHS Highland has implemented a number of automated care functions throughout its 15 NHS-owned care homes. These include applications for Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000, guardianship checklist, reporting, and health and social care operability.
Despite being the largest of Scotland’s 14 NHS regions, covering an area of 32,500 km² from Kintyre in the south-west to Caithness in the north-east, NHS Highland is extremely rural, serving just 320,000 people. Its isolated position in the northernmost part of the UK, however, hasn’t stopped the health board from supplying the very best care in the country via smart, agile technology.
Claire Cameron, Programme Manager for Adult Social Care Projects at NHS Highland, said: “I’m a big advocate of technology and believe it’s the blueprint for the future of care monitoring. We’re proud to be leading the way in the adoption of person-centred technology at NHS Highland and look forward to the next step in our journey of providing superior care to all those in the region, via innovative technologies.”
With the Scottish government toughening coronavirus restrictions further in a bid to slow the spread of the virus as cases continue to rise, Person Centred Software’s agile technology, which is used in over 2,000 care homes across the UK, has recently seen the implementation of eight new coronavirus-specific features to help protect the elderly and vulnerable. These included coronavirus reporting, staff coronavirus auditing, track and trace reporting, and its Relatives Gateway video link. Furthermore, its Care App was found to save each carer one hour per shift to complete administrative tasks.
One care group, Handsale, which runs three Scottish homes in Renfrewshire, West Dunbartonshire and Ayrshire, has also benefited from using digital care technology during the pandemic. With every potential COVID-19 death in Scottish care settings being referred
to The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) as part of their Public Inquiry, having all care notes for an individual stored in one place, from the moment they are admitted to a home to when they are discharged, has been a straightforward process to hand over to the relevant authorities.
Rishi Sodha, Care Director at Handsale, said: “Recently, we had to provide 600 pages of notes from someone who was with us for three weeks and who didn’t pass away from COVID-19. Can you imagine if that person was with us three years and we were still paper-reliant? Homes are having to hand over hundreds and sometimes even thousands of physical pages within the 14 period of request from COPFS, but if they used technology that could store the data, then time wouldn’t be unnecessarily wasted on trying to find everything. This free time has allowed staff to care for residents instead of searching for documents, which is crucial at this moment in time.”
Furthermore, Avondale Care Scotland, a small family-run organisation providing 24-hour residential nursing care for young adults and elderly in Falkirk and Lochore, Fife, have benefitted from the transparency digital care systems offer, with carers, managers and even directors being able to access and view the care of individuals in real-time.
“The transparency offered by the technology, particularly in the high-pressure care environments we currently find ourselves in, has paid dividends to all using it,” said Adrian Hendry, Director at Avondale Care Scotland. “The system has fostered excellent trust and respect for the staff providing the care, and collaboration and communication has greatly enhanced, despite people having to work remotely or self-isolate.”
Connectivity at an all-time high: Care technology provider is turning Scotland digital
For more information on Person Centred Software’s Mobile Care Monitoring system, visit www.personcentredsoftware.com.
The Scottish Government is carrying out an evaluation of the Practical Fire Safety Guidance for Existing Specialised Housing.
The Guidance was issued in January 2020 in response to the Grenfell tragedy and was developed to bring together in one place all fire safety advice and guidelines for existing specialised housing. It covers housing such as sheltered housing, very sheltered housing, extra care, supported housing and small care homes which accommodate a few residents. It doesn’t cover large purpose-built care homes as these are covered by separate legislation.
As the guidance has been available to housing providers, building owners and agents, care providers and personal assistants, for one year now, the Scottish Government is conducting a review. This review will explore uptake of the guidance and users’ experiences of implementing it. For example, how useful has it been, if it has not been used, what are the barriers, how it could be improved, further support required, etc.
About Progressive Partnership
As an independent research company, we have been commissioned to undertake the review of the guidance. We work in accordance with G.D.P.R. and the Market Research Society Code of Conduct. Please be assured that your confidentiality and anonymity is respected at all times. All information provided in this study will be aggregated to provide Scottish Government with summary information, and individual respondents will not be identified in any way.
We are initially conducting some interviews with housing and care providers via Zoom. This will be followed in a few weeks’ time with an online survey that will be sent to all housing/care providers, together with umbrella organisations and industry stakeholders across Scotland.
We would really appreciate your interest in this important piece of research, and do hope you will be able to assist. If you could respond to this email, letting us know the name of the person we would best need to speak with, and provide a direct phone number so that we can be in touch and arrange an appointment with our Executive Interviewers.
If you would rather not be contacted, please email Valerie Strachan at [email protected]
If you would like to read Progressive’s privacy policy, please click here.
If you have any questions about the research, please contact Valerie Strachan at Progressive at[email protected]
The Scottish Government has published Version 2 of their guidance for financial support for social care providers during COVID-19 from December 2020 to March 2021.
Scottish Care continues to have major concerns about Operation Koper. We recognise that police officers are undertaking investigations as a result of a direction from the Crown Office acting under the personal instruction of the Lord Advocate.
Frontline staff and managers are spending huge amounts of time providing data and information for these investigations. This would be challenging at the best of times but in the middle of a pandemic and with dozens of care homes fighting active outbreaks this has added to a real sense of exhaustion, dismay and disappointment.
It has been argued that the NHS is treated in the same way when there is an unexplained death and that this is just a new system for the care home sector to deal with. We totally reject that analysis. There is clear unequal treatment of the care home sector in this whole process. We are not aware of NHS staff being interviewed about every Covid death that takes place in a hospital even if patients have caught the virus which killed them when in an NHS setting and for unrelated reasons. We are not aware that there is a demand upon staff to respond to nearly 3 dozen questions, to provide extensive personal records and files for patients, which are taking frontline staff away from their duties of care and support in the middle of a pandemic.
The operation from the Lord Advocate’s instructed Crown Office investigation has both in its timing, extent and unequal treatment of the care home sector caused considerable distress. Whilst it is of course critical and essential that assurance is given to families and the wider community that everything that could be done was done to protect their loved ones, the balance between accountability and intrusive investigation has not, we believe, been one which the Crown Office has achieved. We very much regret the Lord Advocate chose to treat the care home sector with this degree of disproportionate focus which has done little to enhance community assurance or indeed professional confidence.
We believe these investigations are wholly disproportionate and are causing irreparable damage to the professional integrity of nurses and carers who are exhausted beyond measure in fighting the virus.
As the Astra Zeneca vaccine is getting rolled out across the UK, Public Health Scotland has updated versions of their leaflets to reflect changes are now available in toolkits:
https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/our-areas-of-work/covid-19/covid-19-vaccinations/
NHS Inform was also updated on 1/1/20:
www.nhsinform.scot/covid19vaccine
The Covid vaccine phoneline is also up to date on these changes – 0800 030 8013 – open 8am-8pm 7 days a week.
The Vaccines campaign assets are also available via dropbox here. The campaign was launched earlier today encouraging us all to roll our sleeves when we are offered the COVID-19 vaccine.
Scottish Care is publishing a new report for the final day of the Care Home Gathering. This report, written by Scottish Care CEO, Dr Donald Macaskill, seeks to describe what such a human right to social care could look like in practice.
The paper briefly revisits a previous report ‘The Human Right to Social Care’ which argued that social care should be seen as a human right distinct from but complementary to the human right to health.
The new report, titled ‘What does a Human Right to Social Care Look Like?: A perspective for Scotland 2021‘ is available below.
What does a Human Right to Social Care Look Like
An open invitation is being extended to care home managers/ deputy managers across Scotland to participate in a series of online workshops focused on exploring and enhancing everyday human rights practice in care homes.
These workshops will use a range of engaging approaches to generate space for the sharing of experiences & learning, whilst also offering participants opportunities to consider different or new perspectives on enhancing everyday human rights practice in care homes.
Examples of what workshops will involve include:
It is planned that there will be 5 workshops, run once monthly, beginning in Apr/May 2021.
Participants have the option of: signing up for all 5 or initially signing up for the first two and then deciding if they are able to continue with all 5.
There will also be an opportunity to participate in Action Learning*, which will run alongside the workshops.
*Action Learning is a structured group process, where people come together to explore everyday situations, and are supported through attentive listening and curious questions, to gain fresh perspectives and learning to bring back to their practice.
Belinda Dewar, Edel Roddy and Caroline Green.
All three facilitators have previously been involved in facilitating My Home Life programmes with the care home sector in Scotland and/or Germany, and have collaborated together on developing resources which support conversations on human rights in care homes.
If you would like to express interest in participating in the workshops, or would like to speak with one of the facilitators please complete the contact form on this webpage.
Expression of Interest Form
Scottish Care is hosting an open webinar with Prof Jason Leitch and Dr Syed Ahmed from the Scottish Government. This session will focus on Covid-19 vaccination and will take place on Tuesday 26 January at 3PM.
This webinar session is open to providers and frontline staff. Please share this information with colleagues and staff as it is a great opportunity to ask Prof Leitch or Dr Ahmed any questions or raise any concerns about the vaccine.
If you are interested in attending this webinar, please register by clicking the link below. Once your registration is approved, you will receive an email with Zoom details to join.
Registration link: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_b7si6fGEQDS0so8uqcOyEg
As the Covid-19 vaccination webinar is scheduled on the same day as our weekly Covid-19 surgeries, we have decided to bring the surgery forward to Monday 25 January at 2PM. This will be an in-house session with Dr Donald Macaskill and our Workforce Lead, Caroline Deane.
Details to join this session will be available on the Members Area of our website.
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