Scottish Care Winter Bulletin 2019
Scottish Care’s Winter Bulletin has now been published and distributed to members. This edition is available to view below:
Winter 19 Bulletin_finalcompressedwebsiteJob Opportunity – National Lead: Partners for Integration
Integration of Health and Social Care is the Scottish Government’s ambitious programme to improve services for people who access health and social care services.
Scottish Care is a membership organisation representing the largest group of independent health and social care providers across Scotland.
After a period of consolidation and expansion, Scottish Care is seeking to recruit 2 National Leads to its Partners for Integration Programme.
The Independent Care sector is a key player in health and social care integration to make sure that the citizens of Scotland can access the right care, in the right place at the right time.
This is a role where you can make a difference at an exciting time as the Scottish Care Partners for Integration Programme has become increasingly recognised as supporting the realisation of the integration objectives outlined in the 2014 Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act. As a leader for the team and integration, the postholder(s) will be critical in influencing and contributing to success at a strategic level for Scotland.
Hosted by Scottish Care and working closely with independent sector providers and partners such as Scottish Government and Health and Social Care Scotland, the post involves partnership working at its core, creating conditions for collaboration and co-production, with the ultimate aim of improving outcomes for people accessing care and support. This will partly be achieved by identifying and raising the profile of the positive contribution that the independent care sector makes, and its role in achieving wider adult social care reform.
The post holder will lead and manage the Partners for Integration Team of locally based integration and specialists, currently working to pursue, test, measure and embed new ways of working and improvement methodologies.
The post holder will require to be highly motivated and be able to use initiative, possess excellent communication, leadership and networking skills, demonstrate success and experience working with policy makers, providers, regulators, people supported by services and carers. Experience at senior management level in health or social care is preferred, as is a knowledge of relevant policy, practice and the needs and aspirations of the independent sector.
The post will be home-based and report to the National Director, Karen Hedge. Secondment and job share opportunities considered.
Application forms
An Application Form and Equal Opportunities Monitoring Form is available to download below and directly from Laura Bennie, Office Manager, Scottish Care, 25 Barns Street, Ayr, KA7 1XB or by email from [email protected] and completed forms should be returned to her no later than 12 noon on Friday 17th January 2020.
Interviews will be held on 28th or 29th January 2020 in Glasgow.
National-Lead-Post-Information-for-Applicants
Job Opportunity – Technology and Digital Innovation Lead
An exciting opportunity has arisen for a self-motivating individual with excellent interpersonal skills and experience of establishing and managing an innovative technology-based project/workplan to join Scottish Care.
We are looking for a ‘Technology and Digital Innovation Lead’ to join our team for an initial fixed term period to 1st March 2021. This is a new post funded by the Technology Enabled Care project of the Scottish Government to promote and embed the positive, rights-based use of technology and digital in the independent care sector and to further develop the contribution of that sector to wider technology and digital innovation within social care in Scotland. Homeworking is preferred in this job post.
If you wish to apply, please read the Information for Applicants below. Then please send a completed Application Form and Equal Opportunities Monitoring Form to Laura Bennie, Office Manager, Scottish Care, 25 Barns Street, Ayr, KA7 1XB or preferably by email to [email protected] no later than 12 noon on Friday 17 January 2020. These forms can be downloaded below.
Please do not send us a Curriculum Vitae instead of a completed Application Form as it will not be considered. This is to ensure that all applications can be assessed equally.
Interviews will be held on Friday 31 January 2020 in Glasgow.
INFORMATION FOR APPLICANTS - TECH DIGITAL LEAD
Save the Date – Conference & Awards 2020
We are pleased to announce that dates and venue for next year’s conference and awards have now been finalised – please put these dates in your diary as they promise to be great events.
National Care at Home and Housing Support Conference & Awards
Friday 22 May 2020
Radisson Blu, Glasgow
National Care Home Conference & Awards
Friday 27 November 2020
Hilton Hotel, Glasgow
Marie Curie Briefing: Community settings to replace hospital as most common place to die by 2040?
Scottish Care welcomes the important research which has today been published by Marie Curie in association with the Universities of Edinburgh and Kings College, London.
Together with Marie Curie we call upon the Scottish Government and Integrated Joint Boards to give a much greater priority than they currently do to enable people to die where they want to end their lives – in their normal place of residence.
The report states that if current Scottish trends continue the need for end-of-life care will rise over the next 20 years, particularly in home and care home settings. It goes on to add that by 2040 community settings could account for two-thirds of all deaths. Scottish Care believes it is a fundamental human right that a citizen should be supported to die where they would want to.
However, we share the concern of the Report’s authors that the reduction in hospital deaths (even at a much slower rate than in England) is a ‘scenario [which] is very unlikely to happen, if community support and capacity is not radically increased.’
Providers in the independent care sector in Scotland know the reality of the loss of care homes and care home beds and the considerable impact of reduced real-terms funding for homecare organisations. At the very time that we are asking even greater skills from our care staff we are reducing their support and stripping out essential training and learning.
Dr Donald Macaskill, Scottish Care CEO commented:
“I warmly welcome this Report. It tells it as it is – namely that if we as Scots are to be supported to end our lives with dignity in the places of our choice, the place we call home, then we need to get much better at supporting our care homes and homecare organisations to be places of palliative care excellence. This simply cannot be done on a wish and a prayer. A good death does not just happen it is nurtured, supported and enabled. It is time for national and local Government to give our frontline carers the tools and resources to do the best they can. At the moment with care homes closing and homecare organisations going to the wall with weekly regularity that is simply not happening.”
Marie Curie Briefing - Where will people die in Scotland in 2040
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Biennial Global Ageing Conference: Scotland 2023
Scottish Care is absolutely delighted to announce that we have been selected by the Global Ageing Network to host the Biennial Global Ageing Conference in Scotland in the autumn of 2023.
Following conferences in London, Montreux, Toronto and Seoul in 2021 we are honoured that the decision has been taken to allow Scotland to host this event which will be run by Scottish Care in association with the National Care Forum from England and Wales.
The event will bring together several hundred international delegates and leaders in ageing services, housing, research, technology and design.
GAN seeks to bring together experts from around the world, lead education initiatives and provide a place for innovative ideas in older person care and support to be born. They seek to improve best practices in aged care so that older people everywhere can live healthier, stronger, more independent lives.
Over the next two years an organising committee will be working hard to ensure this event is a success and we will keep you updated as we make progress.
Dr Donald Macaskill, Scottish Care CEO said:
“We are absolutely delighted in the trust placed in our team in Scotland by GAN. We look forward to inviting guests from across the world by offering not only Scottish hospitality, but we hope and inspiring event which showcases the best of dignified, rights-based care and support for the older citizens of our world.”
Katie Smith Sloan, Executive Director, Global Ageing Network and President & CEO, LeadingAge said:
“The Global Ageing Network is thrilled to be joining Scottish Care in 2023 for a joint conference, bringing aged care leaders from around the world together to share innovations, challenges and ideas. Our common mission is to ensure the highest quality of care, services and life for older adults, wherever they live. I look forward to all we will learn together.”
For any further details please contact Scottish Care at [email protected]
Infection Prevention Webinar – 13 December
This will be held on Friday 13 December at 11:00 am.
Details to join this webinar will be available in the Members Section of this website.
If you require any support to participate, please email [email protected]
New Human Rights report launched by Scottish Care
Human Rights Day is celebrated annually on December 10, commemorating the day when the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
Scottish Care are delighted to share our newest report – written by our CEO, Dr Donald Macaskill – on Human Rights Day 2019. This piece is titled ‘The Human Right to Social Care: A Potential for Scotland’ – focusing on the ‘right to health’ in relation to social care and long-term care, and how it can impact social care practice.
You can view the report below.
The Human Right to Social CareHome Care Day 19: Changing times for home care – a blog by our National Director, Karen Hedge
How is home care changing…
The pace of change is fast, yet the principles of care and compassion are age old. Whilst practical methodologies have changed in how we might support someone, the way we want to feel when we are cared for has not. Care, which is grounded in dignity and compassion, which supports us to be independent and to have choice and control, to be part of and contribute to our communities for as long as we might wish, and which makes us feel safe and connected.
We are now in a place where idea to execution can take only a matter of weeks, making it all the more important to ground progress in human rights. There is much conversation about the role of technology in social care – increasingly more of us use wearables, tech is becoming much less intrusive, but the development of products has often been in isolation from the sector, or solution- focussed rather than innovative. Earlier this year, Scottish Care launched A Human Rights Charter for Digital and Technology (https://scottishcare.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Tech-charter.pdf), developed in collaboration with people who access care and support, care providers, academics, software and hardware producers and others. By signing up to the charter, organisations commit to founding their developments in human rights, and with this in mind technology is developed which can help to create the conditions or that positive care experience. The development of the charter came from Dr Donald Macaskill’s report ‘Tech Rights’ which can be found here.
For the last 2 years, Scottish Care has been working with the European School of Innovation and Design at GSA on what the future of care should look like. You see it is important as Megatrends drive change, that to ensure these principles remain as key drivers, we are not only ready, but are part of leading change to come (https://futurehealthandwellbeing.org/future-of-care-at-home).
What was initially seen as a 20-year vision is already coming to being (I said the pace of change is fast). Out of the research came 3 new roles for home care. They have a particular focus on connectivity and feeling connected, which chimes with the human rights approach outlined in the aforementioned ‘Tech Rights’ report. Much of this is about freeing up care staff to simply ‘be human’, and with that the potential to optimise their wide-ranging skills in care and support.
We have since ran workshops with providers and regulators and many others to test out the applicability of the roles and as a result, some organisations have made changes to practice. The roles were designed to stimulate conversation and inspire the sector towards meeting requirements of the future, yet we are now seeing components of the roles in action.
Some care organisations have begun to monitor vital signs which is leading to a reduction in unplanned hospital admissions or GP visits. Some have invested in digital software and staff who will analyse the data contained within to inform care plans for the future. The opportunity to introduce e-MAR in care at home has reduced mistakes as well as medicines wastage.
The regulators are getting behind the trends with the SSSC developing open badges in the use of technology, and the Care Inspectorate looking to upskill their own staff to be able to inspect in a technological age of care.
Technology is being used to support people to live more independently, where an alert system or other can offer security that care, and support will be there when needed. This is not just about in emergency situations, although this is obviously important and can form part of the home care support offer, but this is about longer term data analysis which in identifying trends sooner allows us to intervene sooner.
The challenge with this is the multiple systems which we all use – I am frustrated when my laptop and phone don’t speak because one is Apple and one is Android, but imagine if you have several systems, all collecting data. The solution is not to make them interoperable, nor to have one tech provider owning the market, but instead to have a cloud-based system where citizens hold their own data, and which they get to choose who has access to it. Better still, imagine if this data was held across a person’s care journey and could be accessed across health and social care. Scottish Care is working with organisations to pilot this technology in 2020 and of course will be developed with the Tech Charter at its foundation, because there are many ethical questions to be answered in this context.
But megatrends do not point solely to technological advances. There is much talk of collaboration and whilst laudable, it is merely being promoted as a systemic diversion rather than a real solution. The change required in social care remains as it always has done, by focussing on the individual and how they can lead in their care and support. The future is about creating the conditions to achieve that, and collaboration may be one aspect, but what is truly required is the realisation of integration in the widest sense. Every week I read the Economist, there is a call for a change to capitalism – what is needed in home care is a route to address the power imbalances tied up in tender process and contracting, shifting the importance to achieving person-led care and support with systems which support all who are involved in making it happen. Another example of such a shift is the increasing number of employee-owned organisations in social care – widening the offer which people who access care and support have available to them.
It is clear that the independent care sector is at the forefront of developments for the future. Of course it is, it is a sector of innovators and entrepreneurs and it has the capacity to adapt quickly, with the support of skilled and dedicated staff who come to work because they care. Home care also bucks the business trend by having proportionally more women in leadership roles and as business owners. Scottish Care is working with Women’s Enterprise to promote the sector as such and to explore further why that may be and how other organisations can learn from this, culminating in a Cross-Party Group at Scottish Parliament.
It might be Home Care Celebration Day, but it is not the only day that we should be celebrating home care. It is not only a part of our future but leading the way. As one of very few job roles which sees no threat by automation, it is integral to our future. To deliver care is to care and we should be proud of that.
Thank you
Karen Hedge
National Director, Scottish Care
