Care Home Week: 11-15 June 2018
#carehomeweek

Throughout this week, we will be celebrating and raising awareness of Scotland’s care homes, the individuals who live and work in them, their role in local communities and the opportunities care homes offer to enhance lives and wellbeing for a wide range of people.

We’ll be celebrating different elements of care home life each day from 11-15 June:
• Monday 11 June – Busting myths
• Tuesday 12 June – Human rights
• Wednesday 13 June – Workforce
• Thursday 14 June – Change & adaptation
• Friday 15 June – Engagement

This week is an opportunity to share good news stories and promote the positive things that services and their local communities are doing.

Scottish Care is seeking your help, whether you are part of a care home or work in the social care sector more generally, to enable us to tell these good news stories. We are looking for the following:
• Stories/examples of projects/activities your care home has undertaken (including photos, quotes, stories etc)
• Positive stories/blogs/examples from residents, care staff, volunteers and other members of the care home community
• Information about any events, activities or resources that could be promoted and shared as part of the week
• Encourage engagement between your care home and local community throughout the week, either informally or through events
• If you’re on Twitter, use the hashtag #carehomeweek

If you are able to provide any of the requested materials, we would really appreciate receiving these by Friday 1 June. Please send any blogs or examples of good news stories relating to care homes via email to [email protected]

If you have any questions relating to this, or wish to discuss an idea for Care Home Week, please do not hesitate to get in touch with Kat – [email protected]

Radical action is needed to reform home care services before the sector collapses, a sector body is warning.

A new paper by Scottish Care, the representative body for the country’s independent social care services, outlines the 12 main challenges facing home care services, including:

• Recruitment of staff – 9 out of 10 providers say they are struggling to recruit staff. People are simply not walking through the door despite the increase in the Scottish Living Wage.
• Holding on to existing staff – Recent Scottish Care research showed that 63% of staff who left in the last year did so within the first six months of joining an organisation.
• SDS is not working for older people – Self-directed support (SDS) is the only way that citizens should be accessing social care – but for most older Scots the principles of choice, control, participation and dignity are being daily ignored,
• Social care is underfunded – There is a complete lack of nonpartisan political willingness to undertake a national assessment of how we are going to pay for social care not just tomorrow but into the future. Social care needs to be seen as a major economic contributor rather than as drain on national resources.

The issues are detailed in ‘12 minutes to midnight’, a new paper which will be launched at Scottish Care’s conference for Care at Home and Housing Support Services on 18 May in Glasgow.

Speaking ahead of the conference, CEO Dr Donald Macaskill said:

“Scottish Care has been warning for the last year that the precarious nature of home care in the current climate is leading us closer to a precipice of home care collapse in Scotland. 

 “The result of not investing in this type of care is that we see providers who genuinely want to deliver high quality care in local communities but who are finding the challenges to be almost unbearable. 

 “If meaningful action isn’t taken urgently to ensure we still have a social care system able to care for our vulnerable older citizens, the consequences are enormous – for health and social care, for the economy, for jobs and most importantly, for the tens of thousands of individuals and families who rely on support in their own homes.

 “That is why we are launching ‘12 minutes to midnight’ – to make clear what the very real challenges are and to offer our thoughts on the changes that are necessary to creating sustainable home care into the future.”

 The paper sets out 12 ways in which changes need to be made urgently before it is too late.  These include calls for:

• A Pay Commission to be established to decide what is an adequate rate of pay for those engaged in the increasingly skilled and challenging tasks of care in our community
• The establishment of a Care for the Carer Fund dedicated to ensuring the mental health and well-being of frontline social care staff
• A cross-party and independent Commission on the Future Funding of Social Care in Scotland. Without urgently exploring the financing of social care and health in Scotland we are only dealing with part of the dilemma and challenge.
• The creation of a special division within Scottish Enterprise dedicated to enabling the greater promotion and development of social care as an asset to the wider Scottish economy, as well as to untap the economic and wider contribution of older citizens.

Dr Macaskill added:

“Social care services and the older individuals they support need to be recognised as major contributors to the fabric and economy of Scotland rather than as a drain on national resources.  Let us work together – politicians, economists, those who work and provide care and those who receive care and support – in identifying and progressing potential solutions for the home care crisis we are already experiencing.  There’s been too much talking and wringing of hands and not enough ‘walking the walk’. Action needs to happen now.”

 ENDS

Scotland’s Digital Health and Care Strategy – Enabling, Connecting and Empowering has been released today to strong criticism from Scottish Care, the representative body for independent social care services in Scotland.

The sector body expressed their profound concerns about the Strategy’s contents, specifically its failure to recognise the crucial role of the independent care sector which delivers the vast majority of care in Scotland and employs over half of the total social services workforce.

CEO Dr Donald Macaskill said:

“The failure to include the independent care sector as a partner in the new digital strategy is breathtakingly insular and a huge missed opportunity. In doing so, the real dynamic, technical and digital innovation happening in social care has been ignored.

“Instead, the Strategy seems to focus on statutory bodies ‘getting their house in order’ before extending to other parts of the health and social care sector. In reality, the vision of the Strategy can only be achieved by true partnership with the third and independent sector from the outset.

“After all, this sector supports 90% of all care home residents in Scotland and delivers over 60% of all home care hours. An effective health and social care system simply cannot be realised without this sector’s meaningful involvement.

“It is hugely disappointing and indeed dangerous that the Scottish Government continues to dismiss the contribution of care providers despite all the ways in which it relies on them to support Scotland’s most vulnerable citizens.”