straight talk
straight talk Many care homes struggle to provide a basic level of care to residents, Duncan Shine urges care home directors to look again at how staff are trained in order to improve standards and meet regulatory requirements.
DUNCAN SHINE REGIONAL SALES DIRECTOR SKILLSOFT EMEA Training can be understandably time-consuming for any business, especially for carers who cannot easily take a break. Their time is needed to provide care and finding the intervals to learn new skills or hone current skills can be tricky. Nevertheless staff training is key to improvement so it shouldn t be neglected. While an outsourced training provision can allow care managers to focus on operations, it can also be costly and may not provide the flexibility to address either a change in business needs or the individual carer s needs. The length of training courses can also have an effect on new carers. When taking any job, new recruits will expect an induction training course and if this proves difficult to organise, new carers will not feel supported and may feel unable to perform their jobs to an adequate standard. Care home directors must also encourage a change in attitude from managers and staff. With the care home sector under scrutiny, care managers can t afford to ignore the need for a complete cultural and behavioural shift. While the majority of care homes (63 per cent) are meeting standards and going beyond the call of duty basic standards need to be viewed as a starting point and not the end goal in all care homes. Implementing a training programme is vital, but for it to be successful, it must be tailored and in keeping with business demands. To ensure this cultural and behavioural change is made, training needs to be incorporated into the carer s job role from the offset. Advertising training as part of the job description will help boost recruitment as it will show that as an employer, you are ready and willing to develop employees skills. By offering continuous learning opportunities, employees will appreciate that a future employer wants to build their carer skills and develop them professionally. It will also ensure that all staff are made fully aware of the importance that is placed upon training. By instigating this kind of programme, care organisations will start to see a gradual cultural shift. It won t happen overnight, but staff and residents alike will begin to see an improvement in care standards. Nevertheless, organisations need to make sure that training is accessible and can be done without too much disruption to
carers day to day activities. By offering staff a blended learning approach that encourages both classroom and e-learning, care home directors will reap the benefits of a more skilled and informed workforce. Blended learning captures the best of both worlds by allowing learners to pick and choose how they want to learn and affords them greater flexibility and convenience about when they want to learn. Further to this, by developing learning strategies that incorporate a wide variety of learning activities, care homes will be able to more efficiently utilise learning resources while offering employees more learning flexibility and improved performance support. Carers would also be able to choose the type of learning that best suits their particular learning style, the amount of time available and the kind of information they need.
Directors need to take responsibility for training their staff to ensure they fully understand the importance of their role. Care organisations that view their obligations and industry compliance as just a tick in the box will struggle to meet the needs of those in their care. Faith needs to be restored to this sector, so care home directors must make serious changes where they look to not only meet but exceed their obligations. Incorporating a continuous learning approach, whereby all employees are aware of the standards of support they need to be offering, is vital. The care home industry is unfortunately being let down by a small number of establishments who are failing to meet the necessary standards through lack of training and skills development. To improve this overall perception and reputation of care homes, directors need to take responsibility for training their staff to ensure they fully understand the importance of their role; especially as they are often caring for those who are vulnerable and in need of support.
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46 ¦ CMM JUNE 2013