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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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Guest Post from National Director, Karen Hedge

‘We care because we care’

When I heard this I sat up, I listened and I remembered.  What this lady was telling me was that no matter what challenges she faces, she will turn up, she will be there.  But I couldn’t help but wonder if, with the need to cover long hours with limited support networks in a socially undervalued sector, there will come a point when she can’t care.

I was fortunate to meet this lady, and many other care sector staff, from front line to senior management and executives, when I recently had the honour to accompany Becca Gatherum in facilitating mental health focus groups with a view to exploring both the various mental health pressures experienced by care staff and methods to alleviate these. The resulting report will be launched at Scottish Care’s Care Home Conference on 17th November.

This lady happened to be a care home manager, but I have since heard the theme repeated by front line staff and by home care and housing support providers.

The whistle stop tour of people, places, policies and politics that I have been on since starting at Scottish Care in June has also been a whistle stop tour of emotions; echoing the sheer joy, shock, awe, laughter, sadness, satisfaction, confusion, pleasure, frustration, and hope that I (and I wager many others) have experienced throughout a career in the care sector.

But all the while I have been wondering: ‘who will care when you can’t?’

Pressures such as:

  • A workforce shortage, with 77% of care homes and 89% of home care services having staff vacancies, in a context of increasing need as the population ages and lives for longer with complex needs. The workforce itself is ageing, with 22% of independent sector care home, care at home and housing support staff aged over 55, which puts added pressure on shortages, and of the course the impact of Brexit is already being felt as we lose European workers. And whilst it is becoming increasingly likely that you will hear the phrase ‘social care in crisis’, sadly the impact that the mainstreaming of this rhetoric may be having is to further compound the situation by making it more difficult to retain and attract staff into a profession which is being negatively portrayed. We need to find and share some positives. I know they exist – I am fortunate to be chairing the judging of the National Care Home Awards.
  • Providers being unable to invest in staff training and support because they cannot spare them the time off rota, at the same time as knowing that providing that training and support is what is necessary to enable them to continue to care about care.
  • The impact of the ‘time and task’ nature of many commissioning packages which put a time limit on caring. Imagine an actor, had to repeat a 15 min script to a succession of audiences over an 8, 10, sometimes 12 hour shift, then go home leaving the character and any emotional connections behind. But these are not actors playing a part, they are real people forming real caring bonds and connections. As a former commissioner I remind my colleagues that the fourth part of the commissioning cycle is review, and that is not just a review of the provision, but also of the commissioning itself.

And whilst there are many more pressures I could go on to list, this activity in itself does not answer my question, but it does help me to see my role at Scottish Care more clearly. As a membership body, we have responsibilities to our members, but we also have unique access to a wealth of knowledge and information about the sector which we can promote and use to provide the evidence for change.

So, instead of asking ‘who will care when you can’t?’, I will now be asking, ‘what can I do to support you to keep caring?’.

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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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Sue Ryder Report: Rewrite the Future

Commenting on the Sue Ryder Rewriting the Future Report published today (14 September), Scottish Care CEO Dr Donald Macaskill said:

"The importance of place for wellbeing cannot be emphasised enough. We all know the dislocation and dis-ease which we feel when we are ‘out of our comfort zone’ or not ‘in our own place.’ It is therefore self-evidentially important that individuals living with neurological conditions are able to have that critical part of their wellbeing and health attended to. This is clearly not happening in Scotland today for too many citizens.

 

"The research from Sue Ryder highlights that there are simply too many individuals who are living where they do not want to be and where, frankly, they should not be. Let us be clear this is not the fault of the care home sector which has over the years developed person-centred care and support for thousands of individuals. But the care home sector has become specialist in the rights based care of older individuals many of whom are living with advanced dementia and a majority of whom are being supported by palliative and end of life care. With some notable exceptions there are few care homes which are geared up to the particular, specialist and challenging care and support of many individuals with diverse neurological conditions.

 

"The continued expectation that the care home sector is currently equipped and resourced for specialist neurological care does a disservice not only to the individuals and families involved but also critically to the staff who work in care homes and other residents who live there.

 

"At its heart this is an issue of human rights, dignity and autonomy. If individuals are being placed in communities, which despite their best efforts, are not skilled and equipped to meet their individual outcomes then the rights and dignity of those impacted are not being respected, valued or upheld.

 

"It is time for all stakeholders involved to resource and invest in the dignity of those living with neurological conditions and that means by adequately skilling up, staffing and resourcing specialist residential and nursing care homes and in part by recognising that currently the system is not working for those who need to find a place to be, who need a place for me."

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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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Meal Makers – Information for members

Meal makers is a community food sharing project that started as a pilot project in Dundee in August 2014 and proved to be an instant hit across the city. It has since been launched in Glasgow, Perth and Kinross, Renfrewshire, Edinburgh, Stirling, North Ayrshire and the Scottish Borders. The idea behind Meal Makers is really simple – they connect people who love cooking and want to be active in their community (‘Cooks’), with older (55+) neighbours (‘Diners’), who would appreciate home cooked food delivered to them every now and again.

So how does this work in practice?  When a Meal Makers cook is preparing their evening meal for themselves and their family, they will prepare one extra portion of their home cooking and take it round to an older neighbour at a time which suits both parties. Not only does the project provide a way for older adults to enjoy freshly prepared nutritious home cooking (particularly older adults who might find it difficult to enjoy home cooking otherwise), but it also helps bring communities together and combats the social isolation experienced by many members of the older population. How often meals are shared, and when they are shared is left entirely up to the Cook and Diner to decide between themselves. Meals are most commonly shared on a weekly basis, but they can occur fortnightly, monthly or just now and again.

If you know an older person who would like to take part in the service and receive a meal from a friendly neighbour please call Meal Makers on 0800 783 7770 or if you would like to do something great with an extra plate, then please visit www.mealmakers.org.uk. Alternatively you can email [email protected].

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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.”