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Care at Home services – Take part in Lifecurve™ research

We are encouraging care at home organisations to contribute to the largest piece of Scottish Care research ever to be conducted with a view to influencing future decisions and investment in a preventative approach to care:

  • It should take 5 minutes to complete

  • It will provide a national snapshot of current care provision

  • It will allow researchers to access information on the timing and effectiveness of intervention

  • Your organisation can complete as many as you like throughout the month of October

We are aiming to gather 3000+ responses by working with all of our Care at Home providers. Such a large sample should produce truly representative results and provide gravitas for the outcome to have influence. We request that each provider complete and return 3-4 forms, but you are welcome to complete more.

How do I take part?

Familiarise yourself and your staff with the Lifecurve™:

Throughout October, ask staff to undertake this short survey with the people they support (including completing the consent form):

Complete the survey itself, one per individual, with as many individuals as you like:

Please return all completed surveys and consent forms to:

FAO Professor Philip Rowe (AILIP)

Professor of Rehabilitation Science, Bioengineering Unit

University of Strathclyde, Wolfson Centre, 106 Rotten Row

Glasgow G4 ONW 

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Celebrating Older People’s Day – A message from our CEO

Today, Sunday 1st October, is Older People’s Day across the UK which coincides with the UN International Day of the Older Person

The theme of the International Day of Older Persons 2017 is

“Stepping into the Future: Tapping the Talents, Contributions and Participation of Older Persons in Society.”

The theme is about helping us all to recognise that older individuals in our community have a massive amount of untapped potential and contribution to make to our society.

For those of us who work in social care, in care homes or care at home, we daily recognise that the individuals who are supported are contributing a huge amount to their local communities, despite often living with limiting illness and conditions. Yet all too often they are a part of the community, which others choose to ignore or consider to have nothing to offer and give.

I have written many times in this blog about the creeping ageism, which limits potential and despoils our communities. Older People’s Day is an opportunity not just to celebrate what older individuals have contributed to our society, but to start to work to remove the barriers of attitude and behaviour which are preventing them from giving more, contributing greater and participating better.

There is a real truth in the acknowledgement that we are not a community unless we enable the full participation of every single member of our society.

Between 2015 and 2030 the number of older persons worldwide is set to increase by 56 per cent — from 901 million to more than 1.4 billion. By 2030, the number of people aged 60 and above in Scotland will exceed that of young people aged 15 to 24.

Stepping into the future with our older citizens, wherever they live in our communities, is making about making a commitment that no one will be left behind, no voice will be unheard because it has lost its strength, no contribution will be dismissed because it is articulated by age.

To be valued, to find a place, to be able to give, to contribute, to participate are fundamental to our health and well-being. So as we all grow older in Scotland I hope we can also tap the potential of all in order to maximise the health benefits which come from feeling you can still make a difference.

So in your place of home, in your place of work, in your place of relaxation, think today about how you can include all the generations, and value especially the gifts, abilities, capacities of those who are older.

Let us all therefore work together to step into a future where all can find their place to give, share and be.

Dr Donald Macaskill

@DrDMacaskill

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Registration Support events

In October, the SSSC will deliver two registration support events in partnership with Scottish Care. 

These are free events for employers and workers in housing support and care at home services. They will be held at the Renfield Centre, Bath Street, Glasgow, on the following dates:

  • Monday 9 October
  • Tuesday 17 October

If you are interested in attending please contact [email protected] 

Fort further details please see below:

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Final programme confirmed for Supporting Solace event – 12 October

‘Supporting Solace’

Exploring palliative and end of life care within the independent social care sector

Thursday 12 October 2017

9:30am – 3:30pm

The Renfield Centre, 260 Bath Street, Glasgow, G2 4JP

Following the publication of ‘Trees that bend in the wind: Exploring the experiences of front line support workers delivering palliative and end of life care’ in February this year, Scottish Care has been actively progressing the twelve recommendations made in the report.

‘Supporting Solace’ is a practical workshop designed to explore the realities of delivering palliative and end of life care in care homes and care at home organisations in more detail, and to also learn about new national and local developments in this area.  We will also be launching our latest Scottish Care PEOLC resources.

To view the event programme, click here.

Book your place here.

There is no charge to attend this event.   However for operational reasons we may charge those who have booked and do not attend a fee of £20.00.  If after you have booked you are unable to attend please inform us as soon as possible.

Over the coming weeks we will be sharing updates and information on our Scottish Care website https://scottishcare.org and Twitter @scottishcare using the hashtag #supportsolace

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or would like additional information.

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Action on Elder Abuse: Conference in association with Scottish Care

Scottish Care and Action on Elder Abuse are collaborating to host a conference on 27 October, 2017. 

The event, ‘Choice, Empowerment, Protection… Can we achieve them all?’ represents a human rights-based approach to supporting, empowering and protecting older people.

For further details on the day and how to register please visit the Action on Elder Abuse website. 

A programme for the event is below.

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Royal College of Nursing Scotland launch new intermediate care publications

RCN Scotland has launched two new publications on bed-based intermediate care in Scotland.

The first is a report exploring how intermediate care beds are being provided in Scotland today. It looks at the evidence that shows what works well for intermediate care, and identifies a gap between the Scottish Government’s vision and how intermediate care beds are being provided across Scotland.

Read the report

Alongside the report, RCN Scotland has also launched a decision-making tool for nursing staff involved in decision making about bed-based intermediate care. The tool is designed to be used to think through what needs to be considered to ensure intermediate care beds are delivered in a planned and integrated way to provide safe and effective care.

Download the tool

These resources were developed following extensive engagement with stakeholders, including Scottish Care and independent sector care providers.

RCN Scotland will be holding a Twitter chat on Thursday 28 September to discuss the report. The conversation can be followed at #BBICare

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SSSC annual workforce data report published

Today (Thursday 14 September 2017), the Scottish Social Services Council has published its ninth annual workforce data report on the social services sector.

Key points from the report include:

  • The social service workforce makes up approximately 7.7% of all Scottish employment
  •  53, 680 people are employed in care homes services for adults
  • 68,970 people work in housing support and care at home services
  • A total of just under 103,000 people are employed in the independent sector across day care, care home, housing support and care at home services for adults (over half of the total social services workforce)

The report can be accessed here: http://data.sssc.uk.com/data-publications/22-workforce-data-report/157-scottish-social-service-sector-report-on-2016-workforce-data

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Guest Post from Local Integration Lead, Carolanne Mainland

From Creativity to Compassion

"Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it."

           Michaelangelo

Within our complex social landscape, compassion fatigue is emerging, virus-like, to further fragment natural synergies.

Compassion is the barometer from which our time on this planet will be judged by future generations. Our time is one in which we have accepted the normality of people languishing in hospital, people struggling to access care within their communities, people living and dying in loneliness.

With our media constantly bombarding us with images of disease, war, famine and death we have simply become immune to Human suffering, Human need.

Even within our caring professions, where the ability to empathise and demonstrate compassion are central to the nature of their being, we see the dread of working with certain people and in some cases avoidance of them completely. We further see a reduced ability to feel empathy and a frequency of sick days, accompanied by a host of physical and emotional problems.

We fail to truly notice. And noticing makes all the difference. Noticing gives us purpose and forms the heart of our Communities. Noticing engenders respect and caring. Noticing improves mental and physical health. Noticing builds tolerance and understanding.

You could say noticing is being mindful, but many of us dismiss mindfulness as a passing fad of adult colouring books and self-help manuals. Yet mindfulness has been recognised by the world’s greatest philosophies and utilised to nurture compassion for thousands of years.

The recent rediscovery of mindfulness in our society is no longer confined to complimentary therapy publications, we are increasingly seeing evidence emerging within the pages of respected Journals of Cardiology, Psychology and Neurology. Functional MRI scans are showing that mindfulness practice activates a region of the brain known as the insula. The insula is linked with both empathy and creativity. Meditation studies evidence that, with sustained practice, growth occurs within insula. Recent thinking indicates that creative pursuits also increase activity in this area of the brain with a growth of an increased ability to notice more detail being a by-product.

For many, the notion of meditating will be so alien that they will never engage with it.

You may never have learned to play a musical instrument and school art classes may have long since put you off picking up a paint brush. But what if making some time to do a little focused gardening or some photography with the camera on your phone could improve your ability to notice? As well as the sheer pleasure of immersing yourself in something that is pleasurable to you, you might also be inadvertently be growing your ability to build Human capital, one relationship at a time.

 

Carolanne Mainland   

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Statement on Health and Sport Committee Report on Engagement by Integration Authorities

Statement on Health and Sport Committee Report on Engagement by Integration Authorities

Scottish Care welcomes the newly published Report of the Health and Sport Committee of the Scottish Parliament.

The report follows a parliamentary inquiry into the extent to which the public, service users, the third sector and independent sector are being involved effectively in the work of Integration Authorities (IAs).

In its report, the Committee found a lack of consistency in stakeholder engagement across IAs which are now in their second year of operation across Scotland.

The committee heard evidence from a range of organisations including Scottish Care which presented both written and oral evidence.

While some areas of good practice were cited on stakeholder engagement, the committee heard concerns over engagement being ‘tokenistic’, ‘overly top down’ and ‘just communicating decisions that had already been made’.

The Committee states in their Report their belief that a piecemeal approach to engagement with stakeholders cannot continue, and that meaningful engagement is fundamental to the successful integration of health and social care services.

The Public Bodies (Joint Working) Act 2014 (the Act) sets out the legislative framework for integrating health and social care.

During passage of the Act the then Cabinet Secretary for Health and Well-being stated “the third and independent sectors will be embedded in the process as key stakeholders in shaping the redesign of services.”

The Act sought to achieve this vision by placing a duty on integration authorities to ensure stakeholders were fully engaged in the preparation, publication and review of strategic commissioning plans.

Scottish Government guidance on strategic planning states services should be “planned and led locally in a way which is engaged with the community (including those who look after service users and those who are involved in the provision of health and social care)”.

In responding to the Health and Sport Committee Inquiry Report Scottish Care’s CEO, Dr Donald Macaskill stated:

“I wholeheartedly agree with the findings of the report and its call to end a tick-box approach to engagement with the third and independent sectors. Effective and meaningful engagement is critical for the success of health and social care integration. Scottish Care’s evidence to the Inquiry highlighted that where there was appropriate and effective engagement that there were real benefits for all involved.

However partnership without presence is simply never going to work. Out of the 31 Integration Joint Boards the independent care sector has representation on only 8. This is hardly effective engagement.”

 

 

 

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Care Home Awards Nominations

The nominations to our National Care Home Awards 2017 are now closed.

Many thanks to everyone who has taken the time to submit an entry to the annual awards, which celebrate the fantastic work being carried out in the care home sector across Scotland.

Submissions will be considered by the judging panel and finalists will be confirmed in due course.

Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on November 17, 2017 at the Hilton Hotel, 1 William Street, Glasgow.