The Carer #67 July/August 2023

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Issue 67

Charities Warn Rishi Sunak Not To Backtrack On Social Care Promise An alliance of over 60 of England’s leading charities is calling on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak not to backtrack on the Government’s promise to fix the crisis in social care after four years and no real progress.

On 24th July 2019, the new Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson stood on the steps of Downing Street and pledged to fix the crisis in social care once and for all, saying “I am announcing now – on the steps of Downing Street – that

we will fix the crisis in social care once and for all with a clear plan we have prepared to give every older person the dignity and security they deserve.”

In his first speech as Prime Minister, his successor Rishi Sunak emphasized that the “mandate his party earned in 2019” under the leadership of Boris Johnson was also his mandate and vowed to “deliver on its [manifesto] promise.”

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PAGE 2 | THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023

VIEWPOINT “Rainbows and Unicorns”!

That is a term I often see when politicians, particularly ones that are in opposition, make promises, possibly or maybe even probably, in the full knowledge that they will never be called upon to deliver!

Our front page story makes stark and rather frustrating reading.

Editor In the run-up to his premiership, Boris Johnson vowed to address the longstanding issue of social care, promising comprehensive reforms that would finally fix the broken system. Fast forward to the present, and it has become painfully clear that this simply has not happened, and worse, there appears to be nothing “on the horizon”, and our front page story states the government is backsliding on its promise.

This failure to deliver on its Downing Street pledge has left a trail of disappointment and unmet expectations.

The social care crisis has long been a pressing concern, and Boris Johnson's pledge did offer some hope. However, the government's inaction and inability to follow through on their promises have only exacerbated the challenges faced by those who depend on the system for vital support and assistance.

Industry feedback has been overwhelmingly critical of the government's approach, we regularly publish articles from industry leaders and organisations. I attend many seminars, trade events and take part in podcasts, and all have expressed anger and frustration at some stage with government inaction, which, of course, has led to this letter signed by 60 organisations.

Time and again, they have warned that delays in addressing the issue have dire consequences for the quality of care provided and the sustainability of the social care sector. Despite continuous calls for action and urgent reform, the government has failed to produce concrete plans or allocate sufficient resources to tackle this pressing issue.

Moreover, this failure has not only impacted those who rely on social care services but has also put additional strain on the healthcare system as a whole. Hospitals have seen an increase in admissions due to preventable issues stemming from the lack of adequate social care support, further burdening an already stretched NHS. The clock is ticking and we have seen this week the government has been issued a stark warning from the electorate in the local by-elections, if the Prime Minister does not heed this latest warning from industry organisations and fails to deliver on Boris Johnson's Downing Street pledge to fix social care then the price paid when political rhetoric outweighs genuine commitment will be seen at the ballot box!

One more thing! Watch out for our Afternoon Tea Week competition on page 21! We had a wonderful response last year - nobody celebrates tradition like those in care homes - and we will once again be putting up a fantastic prize for a lucky winner!

As always I can be contacted at editor@thecareruk.com

Peter Adams

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THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023 | PAGE 3

Charities Warn Rishi Sunak Not To Backtrack On Social Care Promise (CONTINUED FROM FRONT COVER) However, The Care and Support Alliance (CSA) has expressed deep concern that despite pledges, four years on, social care reform has stalled once again, leaving millions of older and disabled people, and their families struggling to access the care they need.

U-TURNS, DELAYS AND WATERING DOWN The adult social care charging reforms –including changes to the means test and £86,000 cap on personal care costs - that were due to be implemented from October 2023 have been postponed until October 2025, after the next general election.

The new Health and Social Care Levy, which was supposed to help fund social care reform and improve care, has been cancelled.

And in April 2023, the Government announced that workforce training, qualifications and wellbeing would be backed by £250 million, just half of the £500 million originally promised for this purpose in 2021. A promised £300 million to transform housing options was also replaced by £102 million for smaller in-home adaptations.

THE STATE OF SOCIAL CARE The government backsliding on their promise to fix social care is deeply concerning given that more people are asking for support, but fewer are getting it; workforce vacancies are at an all-time high and public satisfaction with social care is at its lowest ever.

• Requests for support from both older people, and particularly working age adults, have increased significantly to around 1.98 million. Yet the number of people receiving long-term care has fallen to 818,000 in 2021/22, a 55,000 drop from 2015/16. Older people have been worst affected, with numbers receiving long-term care down to 529,000 in 2021/22– a fall of 23,000 in just one year.

• According to Skills for Care, there were 152,000 vacant posts in social care in 2022/23 compared to 111,000 in 2019/20 when the social care promise was made – a 37% increase.

• Based on current trends, the number of social care posts will be required to increase by around 445,000 to around 2.23 million by 2035.

• Analysis by the Nuffield Trust and The King’s Fund shows only 14% of the British public are satisfied with social care services.

“WILD GOOSE CHASE” Caroline Abrahams, Charity Director of Age UK and co-chair of the CSA says: “Since Boris Johnson pledged to fix social care four years ago we have all been on a wild goose chase as one Government policy after another has been announced with a fanfare, only to be subsequently shelved, diluted or dropped. The transformational change in

care provision that older people need to see and that was promised to them is yet to materialise, though with our ageing population it is needed more than ever.”

“The Prime Minister stood for office on the 2019 Conservative manifesto and says he wants to abide by it, so rather than backtracking on social care reform he needs to stand by his word and drive forward with it.”

Jackie O'Sullivan, Director of communication, advocacy and activism at Mencap and co-chair of the Care and Support Alliance said: “Despite the announcement of a long-term workforce plan for the NHS, no such plan is in place for adult social care. There are over 150,000 vacancies in the sector - more than in the NHS – with staff leaving to earn higher wages in other sectors.”

“The number of vacancies has risen by 37% since the government promised to fix social care in 2019. It beggars’ belief that the government has halved funding to support the training, skills and wellbeing for the social care workforce.”

“Saying that social care is in urgent need of reform is easy, but delivering on their promise has proved to be beyond the Government. Rishi Sunak must show the leadership necessary to address workforce pay, timely access to support and the underfunding of the system for working aged disabled adults and older people, before it's too late."

BREAKING POINT Emily Holzhausen OBE, Director of Policy and Public Affairs at Carers UK and co-chair of the Care and Support Alliance “It is deeply disappointing that two Prime Ministers’ promises to fix social care “once and for all” and the reform we desperately need, has not yet been delivered.”

“Families are providing more unpaid care than ever before, and many are at breaking point as the pressure on them becomes too much.

Because of a lack of care, many have no choice but to reduce or give up paid employment entirely because of a lack of care, and their health which is already poorer is put under even more strain. This is having a devastating impact on their work, finances, health and relationships.”

“Care users, families and providers deserve more than empty promises. The government must demonstrate its commitment to older and disabled people, and their families by taking immediate action to tackle the social care crisis.”

“DELIVERING ON SOCIAL CARE” As charities once again urge the government to deliver on the for-

mer Prime Minister’s pledge, Boris Johnson, speaking in September 2022 outside No 10 Downing Street for the last time as he left office, issued a statement saying that he had in fact delivered on his social care pledge, saying his government had succeeded in “delivering Brexit, delivering our manifesto commitments, including by the way, including social care, reforming social care.”

This was hotly disputed by sector leaders, and former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt who is now Chancellor under Rishi Sunak.

Professor Martin Green, chief executive of Care England felt that, although Johnson committed to fixing social care in his 2019 manifesto, it is far from fixed.

“Recent reforms fail to grasp the scale or severity of the issues facing the sector and will not bring about the long-term sustainability of the sector,” said Green. “In fact, the sector is currently facing the most precarious circumstances in its history. Vacancies in the sector have increased by 52% in the last twelve months, rising by 55,000 to a total of 165,000, 45% of providers in the South-East are considering exiting the market, with a similar trend expected nationwide, and energy prices have increased by over 600% since August last year, with care providers ignored entirely by the current package of Government support seeking to address the latter.

“The £5.4bn provisioned for the sector over the next three years will only see £1.36bn reach care providers, substantially short of the extra £7bn a year needed according to a recent Health and Social Care Committee report. In short, Boris Johnson did not deliver on his commitment to “fix social care” and it is incumbent on the incoming Government to fulfil that promise as a matter of urgency.”

“WHY THE DELAY” Addressing former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s inaction on social care reform, Mr Hunt, as chair of the Health and Social care Committee said: “So why the delay? We all understand the sorry state of public finances after the pandemic, but most of the costs of social care reform will not kick in for several years allowing plenty of time for the economy to recover.”

“Fixing social care is our ‘1948 moment’ – the chance to make a major reform that will last generations and stand the test of time.

Winston Churchill supported the setting up of the NHS all those years ago so, in his spirit, it is time to end the delay and commit to ‘action this day’.”

PAGE 4 | THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023

Plugging The Skills Gap In Health And Social Care: Upskilling, Engagement and Leadership Are Key Written by Catherine Mitchell, Partner and Stephanie Malone, Legal Director at Harrison Clark Rickerbys (www.hcrlaw.com)

The struggle of recruiting and retaining good staff has long troubled care sector employers. Encouraging skilled care workers and nurses to join from a competitor, in an industry with squeezed margins is a wellestablished hurdle for all providers. With many overseas workers and employees choosing to leave the UK in the aftermath of Brexit, and others deciding to step away following the unprecedented pressure of the pandemic, the current labour market is hard to navigate. In a new report commissioned by law firm, Harrison Clark Rickerbys, data and cross-sector analysis sheds light on the struggles that employers are facing and provides practical solutions for what they can do to leverage the skills of their current workforce to retain good employees; ultimately closing the skills gap within their business.

Recruitment and retention is a challenge for the majority of UK employers and the struggle to find and keep staff is not new – The Home Office’s Shortage Occupation list, or SOL, sets out the skilled worker roles that the UK Government deems to be in short supply and Health and Social Care is top of the agenda!

What is a relatively recent development is the acute pressure caused by cost of living concerns and pay demands, compounding the skills shortages already being experienced as a result of Brexit and COVID. The shortage extends across every shape and size of employer - 68% of SMEs and 86% of large organisations are facing skills shortages - and, unlike previous shortages, does not just relate to the highly skilled: by 2030 it’s predicted that we’ll need 3.1 million intermediate-skill workers. Our research shows that a long-

standing mismatch between the skills learned in education and the skills needed in the work-place is partly to blame, but lack of training opportunities in the pandemic is having a knock-on effect.

Recent years have seen a tangible financial strain for care providers wishing to ensure they meet legal requirements for National Minimum Wage and holiday pay following significant, high profile case law developments in these areas. Coupled with pressure arising from local authority care allowances, it is often difficult for employers in the sector to dramatically increase the hourly rates of staff pay to attract more candidates.

Becoming an employer of choice is not something you can achieve overnight, but it’s worth the investment. Businesses which put effort into building their brand values, instil purpose through meaningful work and keep their pay and benefits competitive are the ones who will get the attention of candidates.

Job-seekers know it’s a candidates market and the more socially aware, and active youth market are choosy about working for companies who can evidence the right culture, ethics and social capital. Enabling staff to access defined career paths and learning and development opportunities also builds loyalty and retention. For many older workers, whom government would like to encourage back to the workplace, purpose and flexibility trump pay - they can afford to be picky.

With the challenges experienced by employers post-Brexit, many care sector employers are actively launching targeted recruitment campaigns overseas – The Migration Advisory Committee regularly reviews sectors on the ‘SOL’ with Health and Social Care seeing a large increase in sponsor licence holders and more employers in the sector bringing in workers from outside the UK to plug shortages. For those employers who are planning to sponsor workers from overseas, planning around their licence requirements and timeframes is of key importance.

The many factors affecting staff skill shortages in the care sector are of fundamental concern and cannot be easily resolved. Taking time to reflect upon market conditions to inform the steps needed to become the most desirable employer in your region or specialist service can make a significant difference in attracting and retaining the key talent required to run a care service. It has a bearing on CQC registration and the inspection criteria of being well-led, which requires skilled managers supported by an engaged workforce.

Well-considered working patterns and job descriptions, along with a commitment to training and progression opportunities, help to engage workers and employees in a clear vision for your care provision, and foster a sense of pride in working for your care service and, most importantly, your service users.

Care Home Open Week 2023 Smashes Participation Record From Care Homes and MPs 5,200 care homes across the country took part in Care Home Open Week 2023, a nationwide event aimed at encouraging communities to engage with care home residents and the exceptional care professionals that care for them. With 17,000 care homes across the UK, participating homes this year represented an engagement rate of 30% from across the sector and is more than double the number of care homes that participated in last year’s campaign.

Residents in care homes across the country joined families, local people and local MPs for events including a colourful Pride Party, special performances from Michael and Charlene, the winners of the nationwide talent competition Care Sector's Got Talent, and the culmination of an eight-week intergenerational project with a local primary school and theatre.

Led by Championing Social Care, this year’s Care Home Open Week reached 135,000 residents across the care sector and received record engagement from MPs for an event in the sector, with one in five MPs attending a local care home between 28th June to 2nd July, including Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and Chair of the Labour Party Angela Rayner, Former First Secretary of State and Minister for the Cabinet Office Damian Green and Minister of State for Social Care Helen Whately.

Special messages of support were also received from Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Kensington Palace on behalf of HRH The Prince and Princess of Wales, and the Mayor of West Midlands Andy Street.

This year also saw the launch of the inaugural ‘Great British Care Cycle Relay’, which travelled over 300 miles from North to South over 5 days, visiting 12 care communities that showcased the length and breadth of social care services at the heart of each community. A first of its kind, the relay engaged over 300 people either as cyclists or volunteers, or through welcome receptions of residents and team members from across the regions, as it safely passed on a travelling baton between relay legs to its final destination in London.

The week culminated in Thank You Day, which took place on Sunday 2nd July. Led by Care Home Open Week partner Music for Dementia, people across the country were invited to unite in saying thank you by playing, singing and listening to music together on Thank You Day. The campaign included the launch of a new version of Tony Christie’s song ‘Thank You For Being A Friend’, recorded as a tribute to carers who 'never get mentioned'.

Mitesh Dhanak, Chair of Care Home Open Week says: “The Championing Social Care team has been thrilled to see so many care homes across the country take part this year, and our partners have pulled out all the stops to make this year’s campaign a memorable event for all those involved.

“Our ambition is to show the public, potential employees and MPs that care homes can offer a positive, fulfilling and highly enjoyable experience for residents and workers alike and we hope everyone who joined us saw for themselves the incredible value that the social care sector delivers to society.”

Better Pay Is The Solution To England’s Care Recruitment Crisis, Says UNISON Better pay is the solution to England’s care recruitment crisis, union Unison has commented following the release of a workforce report earlier this week from Skills for Care.

Commenting on the small decrease in the number of vacancies in social care in England, reported by Skills for Care, UNISON general secretary Christina McAnea said: “The need for a new national care service grows more pressing with each passing day.

“Until care jobs pay decent wages and offer worthwhile careers, the sector is always going to struggle to attract and keep enough staff to meet growing demand and take the pressure off the NHS. “Vacancy rates are down slightly because care firms have been on a recruitment drive overseas. But

migrant workers are now propping up the broken care system.

“Many overseas care workers have paid extortionate fees to come to the UK. When they get here, many can’t believe what they’ve signed up for.

“Sold an expensive dream, the sad reality for many is a nightmare of terrible treatment, scant training, excessive hours and low pay. The government must hold care providers to account and put a stop to this illtreatment.

“Ministers must stop with the excuses, get a grip and start clearing up the mess they’ve let care become.”

THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023 | PAGE 5

Rights to Care Visits to Be Enshrined in Law The right to have visitors while a resident in a care home or a patient in hospital is to be enshrined in law.

The government has announced proposals to make visiting a legal requirement for hospitals, care homes, mental health units and other health and care settings.

It comes following concerns that s care environments and hospitals are care homes are still not allowing visitors after restrictions were placed during the pandemic.

As a result, the government is seeking views from patients, care home residents, their families, professionals and providers on the introduction of secondary legislation on visiting restrictions. he new legislation will strengthen rules around visiting, providing the Care Quality Commission (CQC) with a clearer basis for identifying where hospitals and care homes are not meeting the required standard.

The government recognises the contribution that visiting makes to the wellbeing and care of patients attending hospitals, and residents of care homes, as well as the emotional wellbeing of their families and so is seeking views on what the new rules will look like.

For health settings, regulations will be reviewed in both inpatient and outpatient settings, emergency departments and diagnostic services in hospitals, to allow patients to be accompanied by someone to appointments.

Minister for Care, Helen Whately said: “I know how important visiting is for someone in hospital or living in a care home, and for their families. I know from my own experience too - I know what it feels like to be told you can’t see your mum in hospital. That’s why I’m so determined to make sure we change the law on visiting.”

“Many care homes and hospitals have made huge progress on visiting and recognising carers since the pandemic. But I don’t want anyone to have to worry about visiting any more, or to face unnecessary restrictions or even bans.”

“I have listened to campaigners who have been so courageous in telling their stories. I encourage everyone who cares about visiting to take this opportunity to have your say on our plans to legislate for visiting.”

Minister of Health, Will Quince said: “Most hospitals and care homes facilitate visiting in line with guidance, but we still hear about settings that aren’t letting friends and families visit loved ones who are receiving treatment or care.”

“We want everyone to have peace of mind that they won’t face unfair restrictions like this, so we want to make it easier for the CQC to identify when disproportionate restrictions and bans are put in place and strengthen the rules around visiting.”

“It’s important that people feedback on the consultation, we want to make sure the legislation is right for everyone. If you’ve experienced unjust visiting bans, please share your experience.”

Challenges around visiting were exacerbated during the COVID pandemic, with many health and care settings restricting and banning visits to stop the spread of the virus, ease pressure on the NHS and reduce the risk of transmission. Since restrictions were eased and there was a return to normality, many health and care settings have made efforts to return to pre-pandemic visiting. There are however still instances where, families and friends continue to face issues with visiting across the health and care sector.

Patricia Mecinska, Assistant Director of Patient Experience at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said: “At King’s, our teams recognise the invaluable contribution that friends, carers and loved ones make to the patients under our care, including supporting us to provide care that’s respectful of our patients’ needs, so enabling them to make a positive recovery. Plans to involve care supporters in a more formalised way will be welcomed by many patients and will aid us in delivering our vision of providing outstanding care

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to patients and communities.”

“The hospital visiting guidance also includes an expectation that patients can be accompanied to hospital appointments when needed.”

With the new legislation, the CQC will be able to enforce the standards by issuing requirement or warning notices, imposing conditions, suspending a registration or cancelling a registration.

Care providers have welcomed the visiting rights, however, they have also warned that power over visits should always remain with the residents themselves.

The social care provider organisation, The Independent Care Group (ICG) has welcomed the clarification but said visiting rights should be with the residents.

ICG Chair Mike Padgham said: “As care providers we know the huge importance of visiting to those in our care in terms of mental wellbeing, happiness and companionship.

“We saw during the pandemic how hard it was for residents and their families when care and nursing homes had to restrict visiting to comply with guidance and to keep those residents and their carers safe.

“So, we welcome the strengthening of the rules but with some provisos.

“Our belief is that power over visiting should always rest with the residents themselves. As we try to help residents to retain their freedom and independence, whether to accept visitors or not should be a part of that.

“There will be times, for example, when a resident doesn’t want visitors and we must all respect that. They might want some peace and quiet or they might not want a particular visitor to come and we have to be mindful of that and not be tempted to give away that choice on their behalf.

“Yes, strengthen the legislation but make sure the residents stay in charge.”

The Government is consulting on the proposed new legislation until 16th August.

PAGE 6 | THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023

Taking Care of Fire Safety

By Rob Yates, Head of Building Products Fire Safety in the UK & Ireland for Siemens (www.siemens.co.uk) All buildings have their own specific requirements in terms of fire safety and risk assessments are the primary method of ensuring that a fire alarm system meets those needs. Care homes are no different, although the nature of the elderly occupants and their mobility issues need to be a particular focus in selecting an appropriate method of protecting the occupants and the care home itself from the threat of fire.

In the majority of buildings, evacuation plans are a core element of fire safety procedures and while this is also true of a care home, the fact that it may be impossible to evacuate some of the residents has a direct impact on the requirements outlined in the respective standards. In BS5839-1, for example, the following clauses need to be considered: • If occupants need assistance from staff to escape and there are more than 10 sleeping persons the system should be addressable • Residential care premises should be provided with automatic connection to Alarm Receiving Centres (ARC) • Signals to Alarm Receiving Centres cannot be delayed from residential care homes

ADDRESSING THE SPECIFICS Given all of the above, it is easy to appreciate that early detection of a fire incident is particularly important in a care home. Many care homes operate with older conventional fire alarm systems. Picking up on the first point, these need to be upgraded to addressable systems to enable the location of an incident to be identified quickly. In doing so, it is important to consider the options in terms of cost implications associated with this migration. Some systems will require replacement of not only the devices but also reconfiguration of the wiring into a loop. Others do not, thereby offering considerable savings in installation costs.

The ability to identify the location of an incident quickly can be further enhanced through powered floor repeater panels, allowing the situation to be reviewed without needing to go to the location of the main fire panel. The ever-increasing use of cloud-based technology (see final paragraph) can take this a stage further, with apps available which allow monitoring of fire safety on a mobile phone.

In many applications delays in sending a fire alarm signal to an ARC are often deliberate to allow time to investigate to see if it is a false alarm or of a scale that can be tackled safely with a fire extinguisher.

However, as is clearly stated in the British Standard, this is not the case in a care home.

Turning to the issue of false alarms, as indicated in the extract from BS5839-1, the requirement is for a maximum of 1 false alarm per 20 detectors annually. Obviously, zero false alarms is an even better scenario in an application where an alarm can cause panic, confusion and considerable disruption. Systems are now available which will provide a guarantee of no false alarms, with multi-criteria detection technology which detects a fire incident quickly without being impacted by deceptive phenomena such as toasters or steam.

Crucial to this is drift compensation whereby the sensitivity of the detector is automatically adjusted to reflect the build-up of dust or dirt, without, importantly, affecting response times.

CLOUD-BASED TECHNOLOGY Increasingly, as in so many of our day-to-day activities, the internet and the cloud are becoming pivotal in the latest fire detection solutions. Digitalisation has made significant advances in terms of ease of use of fire safety systems. User interfaces are becoming ever more graphics-based, with the swipe, click, drag and drop approach so familiar from our mobile phones.

Online portals can provide an overview of a care home’s fire safety, or, for those organisations operating a number of facilities, across all connected sites. Multi-site dashboards can provide locations of all sites in one place, with a status bar indicating the respective status of each in real-time, with a simple colour-coded approach to identify sites where problems may be occurring.

‘Interoperability’ is a phrase that has been around now for some time in terms of building management systems and it is gathering momentum as digitalisation increases. This is the potential to connect multiple systems which can then compliment each other. An example would be a CCTV camera able to zoom in on a fire location or record the operation of a call point, while a lift can report return status or louvres can be automatically activated in the event of an alarm activation to aid smoke ventilation.

Care homes offer their own specific challenges in terms of fire safety. By understanding those challenges and adopting a fire safety approach which reflects them, residents and the buildings themselves can be effectively protected.

Block On Overseas Workers Would Be Disastrous BLOCKING overseas workers from coming to the UK to provide care would be a disaster for our ability to look after older and vulnerable people, providers warned today.

They warn that harming social care delivery would have a devastating knock-on effect on NHS healthcare.

And they have called for those putting forward the idea to come and do a shift in a care or nursing home themselves.

The New Conservatives Group wants to stop overseas workers taking up social care posts – even though there are 165,000 vacancies in the sector.

The Independent Care Group (ICG) says such a move would be a disaster and many care and nursing homes would not be able to provide care if overseas workers were stopped.

ICG Chair Mike Padgham said: “This really is a ridiculous suggestion and one which has been put forward without thinking of the consequences.

“Care providers fought long and hard to get access to visas so that overseas workers could come and help us ease the 165,000 care workers shortage we are suffering.

“It would be an absolute disaster if that was now stopped and many care and nursing homes, including my own, would struggle to fill our shifts and the care of the most vulnerable would suffer.

“At the same time, the impact on the NHS would also be horrendous. NHS care delivery is already being hampered by a lack of available social care. If this went ahead the NHS would seize up too.

“If those suggesting this think that we can manage without overseas staff, maybe they should think about rolling up their sleeves and coming to do a shift in one of our homes – they might think again then.”

The ICG says long standing underfunding of the sector, compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic, has left the sector in its worst ever staffing crisis.

Providers fought to get the Government to allow care workers to get visas to come to the country to try to alleviate the crisis, which is threatening the delivery of care.

“Social care provision is on its knees,” Mr Padgham added. “The last thing we need is someone cutting the lifeline of overseas workers that we have been thrown.

“Long term, we have to find a way to get more people – from this country and from overseas – into the social care sector and that should be the Government’s real priority not hampering us from functioning today.

“They need to reform social care and give the sector parity with the NHS. They must properly fund the delivery of care so that we can give social care workers the pay, terms and conditions they deserve and that match those of their counterparts at the NHS. “Then we might see a reduction in the 165,000 workforce shortage that is threatening proper, safe care delivery.

“Until the Government wakes up and delivers on that long overdue promise, we will need all the help we can get to keep providing care and not unwanted interference.”

91% of UK Healthcare Workers Are Missing Out on Maximising Vital Financial Support New research from Sodexo Engage reveals that only 9% of UK healthcare workers report utilising their workplace benefits to their full potential. As the cost of living (CoL) continues to soar, this indicates that a significant number of individuals are not capitalising on crucial support that could help their pay go further.

The report, titled “The Mountain of Lost Benefits: A Spotlight on Healthcare” explores the perspectives of healthcare employees and HR leaders regarding benefits and the actual value of a benefits package. Sodexo Engage has uncovered a notable disparity between leaders and employees, with 28% of surveyed healthcare HR professionals admitting to a lack of understanding regarding the benefits employees really need.

When Sodexo Engage asked healthcare workers about their preferred benefits, retail discounts or cashback (25%) emerged as the most popular choice, followed by occupational sick pay (22%), and financial wellbeing-related benefits (16%). It is evident that this group is primarily focused on maximising their wages and making them go further.

Interestingly, when healthcare employees were asked “Which of the following benefits do you find most financially beneficial?”, a notable fifth (20%) of respondents chose subsidised food and drink. This figure stands in contrast to the cross-industry average of 14%, highlighting the higher priority placed on this benefit within the healthcare sector. Additionally, over a quarter (27%) expressed that subsidised food and drink should be included in a “standard, must-have package”, compared to the average of 17%.

This sentiment was echoed by healthcare HR respondents. More than a quarter (27%) said employees

specifically request subsidised food and drink in the workplace, as opposed to the average of 18% across all industries. Considering the recent rise in food prices and the fact that many healthcare workers consume multiple meals while on shift, this outcome is not surprising.

Jamie Mackenzie, Director at Sodexo Engage, comments, “healthcare workers clearly know what benefits they want, but it appears that they are not fully making use of what is on offer to them. Our research highlights a strong emphasis on tools that enhance financial wellbeing, indicating that the cost-of-living crisis is a prominent concern for many. However, with numerous individuals reporting a lack of utilisation, I would urge them to explore the benefits their employers provide and consider how these can help.”

The survey also revealed connections between benefits and employee satisfaction, highlighting the impact on retention.

SEVERAL NOTEWORTHY FINDINGS FROM HEALTHCARE WORKERS INCLUDE: • The vast majority (70%) of employee respondents said benefits packages are important or very important when thinking about whether to accept a job offer.

• 80% said they feel more loyal towards their employer when their employer is supporting them.

• 78% said they feel more motivated to work when their employer is supporting them.

Discover the full findings from ‘The Mountain of Lost Benefits: A Spotlight on Healthcare’ report, download now at https://www.sodexoengage.com/mountain-of-lost-benefits-a-spotlight-on-healthcare

THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023 | PAGE 7

Report Reveals A Workforce in Sustained Crisis says Care England Care England has expressed concern at the findings of Skills for Care’s latest workforce report and called on Government to invest the necessary resources to bring adult social care’s sustained workforce crisis to an end.

Professor Martin Green OBE, Chief Executive of Care England, says: “Skills for Care’s latest figures illustrate that the adult social care workforce is in sustained crisis, characterised by high vacancies, high levels of staff attrition and very little sign of letting up. While the slight drop in vacancies to 152,000 from 164,000 the previous year is a small step in the right direction, it is by no means a cause for celebration for a sector that remains in a critical state. The drop in vacancies was driven, in large part, by a substantial increase in international recruits, underscoring the vital contribution that overseas staff make to our sector. This does not, however, represent a sustainable long-term solution to the staffing crisis facing adult social care, nor does it address the key issue facing providers when recruiting and retaining domestic staff – low pay. Chronic underfunding by central Government has resulted in nine out of the ten largest supermarkets in the UK paying wages higher than the average for a social care worker, according to the King’s fund. This must be addressed as a matter of priority through a fully-funded, longterm adult social care workforce strategy that sets out sustainable recruitment and retention pathways for both domestic and international recruits.”

Skills for Care’s annual report entitled ‘The size

and structure of the adult social care sector and workforce in England’ is an overview of the status of the adult social care workforce.

The 2022/23 figures, published on 12 July 2023, show a decrease in the vacancy rate to 9.9% (152,000 vacant posts) from 10.6% (164,000 vacant posts) last year. This was driven largely by international recruitment, with around 70,000 staff recruited from abroad into direct care-providing roles after adult social care was added to the Shortage Occupation List in February 2022.

The total number of filled posts in adult social care in 2022/23 was estimated at 1.635 million, up 20,000 from 1.615 million last year. These posts were filled by 1.52 million people, representing 5.2% of the total workforce in England and more than the 1.3 million employed by the NHS. Martin Green continues: “Despite the Minister for Social Care’s enthusiasm about these new figures, the headline reduction in overall vacancies masks a habitual failure by Government to take meaningful action to address the challenges faced by the adult social care workforce. The sector’s vacancy rate of 9.9% remains higher than that in the NHS (8%) and nearly three-times greater than the average for other sectors combined (3.4%). The recent publication of the NHS Long-Term Workforce Plan illustrates that long-term workforce planning is possible and adult social care is crying out for an equivalent to help ease staffing pressures. Complacency on the part of Government in light of Skills for Care’s newest figures would drive an already underfunded and undervalued sector further into the ground.

Instead, they must take concerted action to deliver a long-term workforce strategy that finally sees care workers paid fairly at a level commensurate for the work they do and on par with colleagues in the NHS.”

95-year-old Neath Care Home Resident’s Wish Comes True with ‘Butler in the Buff’ One Residents’ unlikely dream was fulfilled at Cwrt-Clwydi-Gwyn Care Home, in Skewen, Neath, as she dined with a ‘Butler in the Buff’!

95-year-old Muriel Treszke has lived at the HCOne owned home since April 2022 and on the first day she met Eileen Coyle-Jones, Area Director in South Wales, she told her how she would love to see a ‘Butler in the Buff’.

After organising this with Colleagues, Relatives and Muriel herself, the wish was granted and on the 28th June, accompanied by her daughter, Ursula Morgan and fellow Resident, Verna, who Muriel invited to join her, they were served afternoon tea by ‘Butler in the Buff’, Matt.

The home’s incredible Chef Kris worked very hard creating lots of homemade scones, sandwiches and Muriel's favourite; strawberries dipped in chocolate. Muriel has not had a drink for some time but really enjoyed her prosecco, that Matt served her, along with all the delicious treats.

They chatted about what music Muriel liked and about her life. She likes to dance so Matt looked for some songs suitable to her taste and asked if she would like to dance. He even gave her a twirl!

Muriel commented, “It was one of the best days I have ever had and one I will never forget: Matt was a true gent and I really enjoyed our dance!”

Eileen Coyle-Jones, Area Director for South Wales, commented, “The first day I met Muriel, she told me her dream. To see that dream fulfilled and the smile on her face was priceless!”

Ursula Morgan added, “I knew the minute I

walked in that this was the right home for mum, and this just proves that - her birthday surprise has made her so happy, it was an amazing day!”

Home Manager at Cwrt-Clwydi-Gwyn Care Home, Lisa Llewellyn, said, “I am so proud that we can make our beautiful Residents’ dreams come true.”

PAGE 8 | THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023

Strong Leadership: How Does This Go Hand In Hand With Excellent Client Care?

By Nick Horton, Managing Director, Select Lifestyles (www.selectlifestyles.co.uk) Great leaders are essential at every level of any organisation, but this is particularly the case in health and social care. When you’re responsible for the care of society’s most vulnerable people, it’s so important to ensure that strong leadership runs through the whole structure of your organisation – influencing behaviour from the top down.

CARE HOME LEADERSHIP When it comes to a care home environment, leadership shapes not only the quality of the environment itself, but also the quality of the care provided. Primary care providers will be influenced by their scheme managers, who will in turn be influenced by their regional managers, who will in turn be influenced by people at director level, and so on.

What’s more, health and social care is a very dynamic industry, constantly evolving and presenting new challenges. The Covid-19 pandemic created a huge shift in the industry, totally changing the way we work and operate. For example, we’ve seen new and innovative types of service utilising digital channels, and new restrictions have changed how care can be delivered.

Being able to cope and adapt to such industry changes relies heavily on strong leaders, who are needed to guide their teams through the process. This involves clear direction and decision-making at leadership level, to ensure that resources are allocated appropriately, goals are set, and priorities are established.

Industry changes can often throw up ethical issues too, and a strong leader must be able to consider these and guide their teams in making morally sound decisions. Leading by example is perhaps the best way to do this, so people working at management level need to demonstrate ethical behaviour that prioritises the wellbeing of clients.

HIRING A GOOD LEADER When it comes to hiring a good health and social care leader, it’s important to know what qualities you’re

looking for. First and foremost, making sure that person will want to provide excellent care for your clients and staff is key – if they don’t have high standards of care and ethics, and act with integrity, neither will the people they manage.

An ability to juggle priorities is also key for a leader, as well as being a good communicator to stakeholders at all levels, whether this is clients, family members or directors.

In the hiring process, it often helps to base your decision-making on the applicant’s experience, rather than their qualifications. Although qualifications are important, the health and social care industry is very practical and knowing someone has industry knowledge and experience can be more valuable.

STRONG LEADERSHIP IN ACTION Strong leadership is often evidenced through exceptional results, and this is something that we’ve seen at Select Lifestyles, as one of our residential care homes significantly improved its CQC rating due to the work of our leadership team.

Stratford Road in Solihull, West Midlands, is a six-bedroom residential care home for adults with severe learning disabilities and health needs. Due to the work of Stratford Road’s Scheme Manager, Samantha Morrison, and Deputy Manager, Nanette Kirkham, the CQC rating has improved from ‘Inadequate’ to ‘Good’ – with the ratings running from Inadequate, Requires Improvement, Good and Outstanding.

To do this, the leadership team fostered an ‘all in this together’ approach, putting themselves into the support worker role. This saw them carry out the responsibilities associated with this role, ensuring clients received the best care possible. They clearly outlined their priorities and maintained a relentless desire to achieve these, which played a big part in improving the overall quality of the service. They also implemented 1-2-1 staff meetings, staff observations and an employee of the month incentive to help boost morale within the service.

As a result, the leadership team has transformed this service back into a safe home for clients and a safe work environment for staff, at the same time as retaining all the clients using the service.

The positive impact that good leadership can have for health and social care organisations is clear to see.

If your leaders are caring, understanding and good communicators, you’ll reap the rewards for both your staff and the people you’re caring for.

‘Thank You for Being a Friend’ by Tony Christie and Friends Launched Thank You for Being a Friend – rerecorded by singing legend Tony Christie and featuring stars such as Sting and Nile Rodgers, has been launched today by the Music for Dementia campaign for Thank You Day 2023 Now the song is out there, Music for Dementia is encouraging individuals and communities throughout the UK to learn the song and sing it together at 3pm on Sunday 2 July as a special thank you to someone who has made a difference.

This year, the day has a particular focus on carers so it was really special to have five carers on the single singing backing vocals.

All proceeds from the single will go to The Power of Music Fund being convened by the National Academy of Social Prescribing with £1million of

It’s Your “Turn”

By Greg Whelan, Product & Marketing Director, Wellell UK Limited (uk.wellell.com)

Pressure Ulcers can be serious and lead to life threatening complications such as blood poisoning and gangrene. So knowing that this can happen what are the necessary steps to help prevent these and what obstacles do care home managers encounter that can give rise to these occurrences?

A simple understanding of how pressure ulcers occur and who is most likely to get them is important and equally how can they be prevented through appropriate equipment and turning regimes.

HOW DOES A PRESSURE ULCER OCCUR? Pressure ulcers can happen when an area of skin and the tissues underneath it are damaged by being under such pressure that the blood supply is reduced commonly tending to occur when people spend long periods in a bed or chair.

Anyone living in a care home can develop a pressure ulcer, but some factors make it more likely.

Risk factors include: • Limited mobility or being unable to change position without help.

• A loss of feeling in part of the body.

• Having had a pressure ulcer before or having one now.

• Not having eaten well for a period of time and/or being dehydrated.

• Thin, dry or fragile skin.

• A significant cognitive impairment.

WHAT ACTIONS SHOULD TAKE PLACE? For people living in care homes who have one or more risk factors and who have been referred to the community nurse, a pressure ulcer risk assessment should be carried out and documented on their first visit.

Make a written care plan for anyone assessed as being at high risk of developing a pressure ulcer and review it regularly. The plan should focus on the actions needed to help prevent a pressure ulcer from developing, taking into account:

support from The Utley Foundation.

Christie explains: “Performing, staying positive and trying not to let dementia affect my life really lifts me so taking part in Thank You Day has been a privilege and a blessing; not just for me but for my whole family, including my wife Sue who’s behind me every step of the way. Sue supports me rather than cares for me right now, but there are millions of unseen and unsung of carers doing their thing every day and this is our way of thanking them.

“I am living proof of the power of music on people living with dementia and I fully support the Music for Dementia campaign and its work with Thank You Day. It is so special that this country has been gifted a day that connects communities with this incredible celebration of people and mus To watch the video go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tQrDI_neG0 • The results of the risk and skin assessment.

• The need for any extra pressure relief, for example a high-specification mattress and/or cushion.

• The person’s mobility and ability to change position unaided.

• Any other conditions.

• The person’s own views and wishes, including whether they are able to understand the risks and make an informed decision. If not, use of the Mental Capacity Act may be necessary.

BUT WHAT OBSTACLES WILL THE CARE HOME MANAGER FACE WHEN MANAGING PRESSURE ULCERS? The care home manager once faced with a client suffering a pressure ulcer is potentially exposed to a long process of nursing intervention to manage the PU (PI – Pressure Injury now in more widespread use) to get to a stage where it has fully healed. Subject to the risk assessment carried out the care plan will identify what actions need to take place and regular turning on a suitable mattress is one of the critical factors in PI management and importantly, prevention.

Sometimes the added difficulty faced by the home is that of cost and staffing levels all of which can be managed more effectively by introducing suitable equipment to effect regular turning – both automatically and continuously, in cycles that can be identified in the Risk assessment needs and included in the care plan to be put into place.

Wellell UK Limited, a longstanding medical device manufacturer designed and introduced the cutting edge lateral turning mattress system, Optima Turn. With its multiple settings it can be used in step up and step down therapy to meet the needs of each client requiring the mattress and help either prevent or eradicate any newly acquired or historical PI whilst offering efficiency improvements, enhanced care, reduced staff moving and handling injuries and greater dignity to the client, especially when in a palliative state. Why not ask us to demonstrate the product to you and even trial it and see how we can prove not only its clinical credibility but also the huge cost savings that it can bring to each care home. After all, more efficient equipment means healthier clients, reduced stress levels on staff and happier family members of those clients in your care. If you would like more information please contact us via our website: https://uk.wellell.com/en/howcan-we-help or call on 01905 774 695 See advert on back cover for further details.

References taken from NICE Guidelines: https://www.nice.org.uk/about/nice-communities/socialcare/quick-guides/helping-to-prevent-pressure-ulcers#repositioning-advice

THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023 | PAGE 9

UK Care Workers Are Feeling Happier Than 12 Months Ago Despite the ongoing challenges facing the sector, those working in care are happier than they were 12 months ago, according to new data from shift work platform, Deputy.

Between January and June this year, care workers shared how they felt after their shift. This revealed the sentiment of employees who together gave more than 26,000 responses.

The number of care workers who recorded feeling ‘amazing’ or ‘good’ in 2023 has increased by 13% compared to the same period last year, with a combined 64% feeling this way compared to 51% last year:

Amazing

Good

OK

Frustrated

Stressed

Care workers in 2022

23%

28%

42%

3%

4%

Care workers in 2023

26%

38%

30%

2%

4%

Jon Wilson, SVP at Deputy, said: “Our Shift Worker Happiness Index highlights the resilience of workers in the care industry. We know just

how tough conditions have been for those working in the sector over the last few years and we’re really impressed by the improvements our

customers have been making to really look after their staff and to make sure they feel valued. From the data on our platform we know that some care employers have been looking for ways to improve flexibility and conditions for their staff. In some cases introducing six hour shifts as well as 12 hour shifts.”

Deputy’s data also highlighted a significant improvement in the advanced planning of shifts in the care industry over the past 12 months. Between January and June 2022 and the same period this year, the average number of days’ notice care workers were given of their shifts moved from 21.5 days to 28 days.

Jon Wilson said: “We know that a lack of forward planning can be incredibly stressful for shift workers. Especially for those who need to plan childcare for their shifts or people who work multiple jobs. These are really good indicators that positive changes are being made in the UK care industry to prioritise the welfare of team members. Leading with compassion and embracing a culture of well-being is absolutely vital to creating a thriving workplace.”

To see the full Shift Worker Happiness Index created by Deputy visit https://tinyurl.com/2p8vn229

Care Residents And Nursery Children Imitate Emojis To Celebrate World Emoji Day Care residents and nursery children within a Nottinghamshire care community have marked World Emoji Day by attempting to imitate them – looking to pull faces and pose in real life as part of an introduction to the colourful icons.

They then attempted to draw their own versions, with the winning effort from four-year-old Maddox dubbed “Friendly Fred” – which the children would like to see signify care residents as a permanent emoji.

With emojis a modern phenomenon that have become part of everyday life in the digital era, many care residents are unfamiliar with their use – and are equally as unsure of their meaning.

To celebrate the day, the care team at Wren Hall, a dementia specialist nursing home in Selston, Nottinghamshire, asked residents to guess various emojis’ meaning, before asking them to strike a pose to see if they could copy them and make a passable impression.

The care home sits adjacent to Little Wrens nursery, and with intergenerational relationships a big part of the ethos within the care community, the nursery children were keen to get involved too.

The youngsters, who are aged between three and five, are just starting to become familiar with emojis – and they were happy to have a guess at and imitate the emojis themselves.

Following this, the residents and children then attempted to draw their own emojis – and were tasked

with trying to convey what life is like at the home/nursery.

The winning effort, deemed “Friendly Fred”, depicted one of the home’s residents. When asked for his thinking behind it, Maddox (4) said: “The residents are really friendly.” And the rest of the children felt it could be used more widely, saying: “They [residents] should have their own emoji!”

Anita Astle of Wren Hall, said: “We had a really fun day imitating emojis with a lot of laughter. As you can imagine, emojis are a bit of an unknown phenomenon for our residents, so we enjoyed introducing them to the concept, as well as sharing their meaning – as some can be a little bit confusing!”

She continued: “Along with the residents, the kids really got stuck in and it was nice to see the juxtaposition of old and young when exploring what’s very much a modern innovation. And whilst the children are just getting to grips with emojis and will be very much familiar with them within a couple of years, it’s still great to introduce residents to new things – and they loved doing so.”

Anita added: “The design of “Friendly Fred” was really heartwarming and lovely to see. And the fact that the children see the residents as friendly and approachable is what intergenerational relationships are all about. It’s a wonderful benefit of our care community and makes coming to work a real joy.”

Scrap Plan For Single Word Inspection Ratings For Underfunded Adult Social Care Services – LGA Government plans to introduce a single-word rating system for adult social care services should be scrapped given concerns about the ability of councils to meet all of the legal duties they will be judged against, following years of underfunding, the Local Government Association said this week.

From the Autumn, and following a series of live pilots, the Care Quality Commission regulator will begin a new assessment regime which will see councils handed an overall rating of either ‘inadequate’, ‘requires improvement’, ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ as part of a new system of adult social care assurance introduced by the Government.

Ahead of the LGA’s Annual Conference – which begins in Bournemouth next week – councils insist that it is unhelpful and unproductive to give single word ratings to such a complex service which is struggling with the consequences of years of underfunding The latest Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) survey found three quarters of directors of adult social care are not confident they can meet their legal duties under the Care Act – these are the duties against which they will be assessed by the new CQC assurance system.

The LGA, which represents 350 councils across England, said narrative reports – instead of single-word ratings alone – would provide a more useful and balanced picture of the quality of services.

Adult social care has faced over a decade of underfunding and unmet and under-met need has grown as a consequence. Extra money announced for adult social care in last year’s Autumn Statement will help ease pressures but much of it will be absorbed by meeting demography, pay and inflationary pressures and it falls well short of what is needed to allow councils to fully deliver against their Care Act duties given wider workforce and care market pressures.

In addition to funding for adult social care now through the Autumn Statement, the LGA also continues to question the adequacy of earmarked funding for wider reform of care and support.

LGA analysis shows: • £250 million investment in measures to support the social care workforce equates to £78 per worker per year;

• £102 million investment for home adaptions, which are to help people stay in their home or to get home more quickly after a stay in hospital is under £27 per household per year for those people living with a health condition who require a home adaptation; • £25 million for unpaid carers works out at £5 per carer.

The Government needs to be realistic in setting expectations of what can be achieved even with this funding. Councils continue to work hard to protect vital adult social care services and meet their statutory duties having diverted billions of pounds away from other council services in recent years to try and keep them afloat.

However, this has not been enough to avoid cuts to services with the ADASS survey also showing social care directors are having to find savings of £806 million this year, up from £597 million in 2022/23, to balance the books.

The LGA said government needs to provide immediate investment to end this crisis, address unmet and under-met need and urgently agree a long-term funding and reform plan to allow all people to access the care services they need to live an equal life.

Cllr David Fothergill, Chairman of the LGA’s Community Wellbeing Board said: “It is clear that most councils are struggling to meet all of their legal duties under the Care Act. Given that, it seems absurd to push ahead with single word ratings for adult social care departments, which would oversimplify what are very complex services to deliver. As it stands, councils are being set up to fail.

“The Government must ensure that the assurance process is, and remains, productive and supportive for councils. Sufficient time must be given to learn the lessons from the pilot sites. Councils want to give full transparency to their residents on how their adult social care services are is performing, but a single word ratings does not do justice to the complex and parlous state that adult social care is in. ”Working with people who draw on care and support, councils and care providers, the Government also needs to urgently develop and implement a fully costed, long-term, sustainable plan to fund social care.”

THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023 | PAGE 11

Social Care 'Ignored' in Government's NHS Long Term Workforce Plan Radical plans to improve the NHS will be spoiled by the government’s failure to carry out matching reform to the social care sector, providers have warned.

As part of the government's Long Term Workforce Plan published earlier this month, a record numbers of doctors, nurses, dentists and other healthcare staff will be trained in and are expected to be employed in the NHS in England over the coming years through sweeping plans to improve staffing in the health service.

The possibility of cutting the amount of time doctors spend in medical school, driving up the number of home-grown NHS staff and ramping up apprenticeship places are among the ideas to deal with severe staff shortages in the NHS. However, providers say the Government’s £2.4bn plan for the NHS is fundamentally flawed by a frightening lack of mention of social care.

And that without similar reform to social care, so that the two can work side by side, the NHS reform is dead in the water.

“CINDERELLA SOCIAL CARE” ICG Chair Mike Padgham said: “We have yet to see the detail of the NHS reform but from what I am hearing so far, it is the same old story, Cinderella social care isn’t going to the ball again.

“Worthy as the £2.4bn strategy is, to carry out NHS reform without giving similar reform to social care at the same time makes a mockery of the whole plan.

“The biggest issue in healthcare at the moment is that there isn’t enough care for people in the community so that they can be discharged from hospital or not have to go to hospital in the first place.

“Unless that is resolved, any reform of the NHS will surely be in vain.

“Without a properly funded and fully functioning social care system, NHS healthcare will be hampered, fighting to provide better care with a hand tied behind its back.

“We urgently need the two sectors to be merged, to create a National Care Service, bringing parity in funding to both sides of the equation and parity in pay, terms and conditions to the excellent staff who work in social care, take huge responsibility, stress and strain and have never been properly recognised.”

The ICG says long standing underfunding of the sector, compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic, the ensuing staff shortages and now the cost-of-living crisis and rapidly rising bills, have left a sector on its knees, with some providers leaving the industry.

SHORT -SIGHTED Professor Vic Rayner OBE, CEO of the NCF said: “Today’s delayed workforce plan publication bears no relation to the much-vaunted integrated workforce commission of 2021. In 2021, HEE was commissioned to review the long term strategic changes needed for the health and social care workforce to support patients and the population of the future. What has appeared is a plan that only talks to the needs of the NHS and has a glaring gap around professionals within adult social care and any non-clinical professional in health and social care. The irony of publication on the day before the first anniversary of the establishment of the Integrated Care Systems should not be ignored. It makes repeated reference to integration, recognising the importance of stabilising and improving adult social care in making this plan a success, but contains no plans for how the government would do this. This seems extremely short-sighted and is characteristic of an ongoing deprioritisation of social care, which has seen reforms delayed, scrapped and reduced in scope over the last few years.

“This document, as originally scoped, should be a tale of two workforces coming together as one, yet this plan risks putting yet more strategic and operational distance between the two. We should not forget that this year is also the 75th anniversary of social care and yet only the health workforce is getting both a plan and additional funding – funding that is nearly ten times greater than the current plans to address workforce reform across the whole 1.6 million strong care workforce.”

“More importantly, the government is missing the opportunity to unlock the full potential of adult social care. Social care contributes £51.5bn to the economy in England and proper investment in adult social care, as a key part of the nation’s infrastructure, would unlock jobs, growth and tackle health and socio-economic inequalities across the country. It would be one of the single-most powerful policy decisions a government could make to better the lives of people everywhere. “

TLC Care Choir Spreads Love And Celebrates Diversity During Pride Month Team members across the nine homes and the Support Office of care home group TLC Care, joined forces to participate in the muchanticipated ‘TLC Care Choir Sings for Love’ event. This enchanting musical celebration was organised as part of the company’s ‘Love is Love’ festivities during Pride Month.

The TLC Care Choir, composed of talented individuals from various departments, came together to deliver a captivating performance of three uplifting songs including the Beatles, All You Need is Love, Bob Marley’s, One Love and L-O-V-E by Nat King Cole. The morning was filled with joy, harmony, and a powerful message of acceptance, underscoring the organisation’s unwavering commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion.

The highlight of the event was the choir’s performance of L-O-V-E to Cooperscroft Care Home, where residents were treated to a musical experience. The soulful voices of the TLC Care Choir filled the air, touching hearts and uplifting spirits. The residents, with smiles on their faces, swayed along to the melodies.

Pride Month serves as a reminder to celebrate and honour the LGBTQ+ community, their struggles,

achievements, and the ongoing fight for equality. TLC Care recognises the importance of creating a safe and accepting environment for all, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. Through events like the ‘TLC Care Choir Sings for Love,’ the organisation affirms its dedication to fostering a culture of respect, understanding, and compassion within its communities.

Speaking about the event, Lorna Russell, Chief Operating Officer at TLC Care, expressed their pride in the company’s team members and their commitment to promoting diversity and inclusivity. She said, “We are incredibly proud of our team members for coming together to celebrate Pride Month and showcase our collective dedication to equality. The TLC Care Choir delivered a remarkable performance that touched the hearts of our residents, reinforcing our shared values of love, acceptance, and belonging.”

The ‘TLC Care Choir Sings for Love’ event exemplified the belief in the transformative power of music and the importance of fostering connections between team members, residents, and the wider community. By spreading love through song, TLC Care aims to create a positive and supportive environment where everyone feels valued and accepted.

You can view the choir’s performance at https://youtu.be/wjp-zuSrzPw

Providers Strengthen Ranks for Campaign A CARE providers organisation is set to add five new directors to its ranks as it gears up for a pre–General Election campaign.

The Independent Care Group unveiled the new directors at an event in York and declared that the time for social care reform was overdue.

ICG Chair Mike Padgham said: “With the addition of these five new directors we will strengthen the Board of the ICG, add new and valuable skills and get the ICG ready for the campaign trail ahead.

“We are rolling towards a General Election and it will be up to the ICG, as the officially recognised social care provider organisation in our region, to campaign for it to feature in the political party manifestos.”

The new directors, to be elected at the next Board meeting, are: John Russell, Director at Holt Retirement of Hutton Buscel; Lizzie Hancock, Managing Director and Owner of Fulford Nursing Home; Jill Baker, Marketing Manager with Hempsons solicitors in Harrogate; Paul McCay, CEO of Wilf Ward Trust in Pickering and Aaron Padgham, a Director with Saint Cecilia’s Care Group in Scarborough.

A sixth Board member, representing Coventry University, is expected to join the Board shortly to strengthen its educational representation. Other appointments are to be made in due course, to further strengthen and grow the Board.

Mr Padgham added: “With these directors we will widen the Board’s expertise and bring more vital knowledge of residential and nursing care, marketing, legal services, supported living, accountancy and training to the table.

“Our members and the hundreds of thousands of people they care for are looking to the ICG to provide

strong leadership at this challenging time for social care.

“With a newly-revitalised Board we can do that and can step up our campaigning activity to make a difference to social care in our region and across the country.”

The new directors were announced at a masterclass event with author and social care recruitment expert Neil Eastwood in York on Thursday.

The Board is promoting the ICG’s Five Pillars of Social Care Reform document, which has just been published.

Copies have been sent to the Government and to the Labour health team to influence their thinking on social care in the lead up to the party conference season this autumn and a General Election, possibly next year.

The ICG wants to know how politicians plan to get care to the 1.6m people who currently can’t get it; tackle the 152,000 vacancies in the sector; properly recognise and reward the social care workforce with better pay and conditions and find the extra 445,000 care staff the sector will need to cope with rising demand, by 2035.

The five pillars in the document are: • Ring fence a percentage of GDP to be spent on providing social care to those who already receive it and the 1.6m who can’t get it • Create a unified National Care Service, incorporating health and social care • Set a National Minimum Wage per hour for care staff on a par with NHS • Set up an urgent social care task force to oversee reform • Fix ‘fair price for care’ tariffs for things like care beds and homecare visits.

PAGE 12 | THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023

Unlocking the Full Potential: 15 Advantages of Residential Care Homes for Seniors Since the pandemic, the landscape of senior care has witnessed a significant shift. As individuals around the world grappled with the challenges posed by the global health crisis, the perception of residential care homes as a lifestyle choice for seniors underwent a notable transformation.

Prioritising safety and personal well-being, many people started to associate residential care homes solely with meeting specific care requirements rather than embracing them as a preferred living option.

However, it is crucial to reevaluate the advantages that residential care homes offer to seniors. These unique communities have long provided a nurturing environment, companionship, and a range of tailored services that enhance the quality of life for older adults.

As the industry works tirelessly to regain trust and instil confidence in potential residents, it is essential to shed light on the multitude of benefits that residential care homes can offer in this post-Covid era.

With this in mind, Stewart Mcginn, Managing Director at Baycroft Care Homes (www.baycroft.co.uk), explores the 15 advantages of residential care homes, highlighting why they are an excellent choice for ageing individuals and their families.

PERSONALISED CARE: Residential care homes provide personalised care plans tailored to individual needs. Trained staff members are available around the clock to assist residents with daily activities, medication management, and health monitoring, ensuring their safety and well-being.

INDEPENDENCE: While residents receive support with their daily tasks, residential care homes emphasise maintaining independence. Residents have the freedom to make decisions about their daily routines and enjoy a sense

of autonomy, boosting their self-esteem and overall satisfaction.

secure environment.

COMPANIONSHIP

TRANSPORTATION SERVICES:

Social interaction is crucial for emotional well-being. Residential care homes foster a sense of community, allowing residents to engage in activities, events, and outings with their peers. This companionship reduces feelings of isolation and enhances overall happiness.

Many residential care homes offer transportation services, enabling residents to attend medical appointments, social outings, and shopping trips. This convenience ensures that seniors can maintain an active lifestyle and stay connected with the outside community.

SAFETY AND SECURITY

ASSISTANCE WITH ACTIVITIES OF DAILY LIVING (ADLS)

One of the primary concerns for seniors is safety. Residential care homes offer a secure environment with trained staff members who are adept at handling emergency situations promptly. This ensures residents' safety, providing peace of mind for both residents and their families.

Residents in residential care homes receive assistance with activities of daily living, such as bathing, dressing, grooming, and mobility.

Trained caregivers are available to provide support, ensuring that residents can maintain their personal hygiene and overall well-being.

NUTRITIOUS MEALS Proper nutrition is vital for maintaining good health. Residential care homes offer well-balanced meals prepared by professional chefs, taking into account residents' dietary restrictions and preferences. Regular meals contribute to overall well-being and prevent malnutrition.

PEACEFUL AND COMFORTABLE LIVING SPACES Residential care homes offer well-designed living spaces that are comfortable and adapted to the needs of seniors. These homes provide a peaceful and welcoming atmosphere, allowing residents to feel at home and relax in a stress-free environment.

MENTAL STIMULATION

Living in a residential care home eliminates the burdens of household chores and maintenance tasks. Staff members handle housekeeping, laundry, and home maintenance responsibilities, allowing residents to focus on enjoying their lives to the fullest.

Engaging in mentally stimulating activities is vital for cognitive health. Residential care homes organise various activities that challenge residents' minds, including puzzles, brain games, discussion groups, and educational seminars, promoting mental agility and preventing cognitive decline.

ACCESS TO HEALTHCARE SERVICES

RESPITE CARE SERVICES

Residential care homes often have partnerships with healthcare providers and offer on-site medical services. Regular health check-ups, medication management, and assistance with doctor's appointments are readily available, ensuring residents' healthcare needs are met effectively.

Residential care homes often provide respite care services, allowing primary caregivers the chance to take a break from their responsibilities. Whether for a few days or weeks, respite care ensures that caregivers can rest and rejuvenate while their loved ones receive proper care in a supportive environment.

ENHANCED QUALITY OF LIFE

CONTINUUM OF CARE

With a wide range of amenities and recreational activities available, residential care homes enhance the quality of life for seniors. Residents can participate in fitness programs, arts and crafts, cultural events, and educational workshops, fostering a vibrant and engaging lifestyle.

Many residential care homes offer a continuum of care, meaning they can adapt to residents' changing needs. As individuals age or experience health challenges, the care provided can be adjusted accordingly, ensuring a seamless transition and minimising disruptions.

Residential care homes offer numerous benefits that cater to the specific needs of ageing individuals. From personalised care plans and companionship to enhanced quality of life and peace of mind for families, these facilities prioritise the well-being of seniors.

MAINTENANCE-FREE LIVING

PEACE OF MIND FOR FAMILIES: Choosing a residential care home for a loved one provides families with peace of mind. They can rest assured that their loved ones are receiving professional care, support, and supervision in a nurturing and

Housekeeper Highly Commended at Essex Care Sector Awards A local care home in Brentwood, is celebrating the news that their very own head housekeeper has been highly commended at the prestigious Essex Care Sector Awards.

Diane Sargent, who was shortlisted for the award in June, has been a dedicated member of the Old Shenfield Place team for the past six years and has been instrumental in providing quality care for its residents.

Diane attended the Essex Care Sector Awards on Thursday, 6 July, where she was recognised for her unwavering commitment to her role and the positive impact she has made on the lives of the residents.

Diane was overjoyed to be at the awards and described it as a wonderful experience. She said: “It was a really good event and we got to meet lots of people in the industry. It was a good networking opportunity.

“We received lots of helpful tips and suggestions from Simon Evans who works in Essex County Council. Overall it was a lovely evening and I was glad to be a part of it.”

The awards ceremony was made even more enjoyable by the presence of singer, actress and activist Amanda Waring as the host.

Diane expressed her gratitude about the recognition she received at the awards. She said: “I was incredibly honoured to be recognised at such a prestigious event for my work at

Old Shenfield Place.

“This has motivated me to keep doing what I do best and to go above and beyond for the home and its residents.”

As part of her role, Diane works closely with her colleagues to ensure that the home is well-kept and clean at all times to provide the residents with a comfortable space to live in.

In honour of her hard work, the dining room has been named "Diane's Diner."

Diane also supports the domestic team in maintaining a clean and well-kept environment, ensuring that the residents feel proud of their home when welcoming their loved ones during visiting hours.

Cristina Duran, home manager at Old Shenfield Place, said: “The event was great and we are all very proud of Diane for being recognised by industry experts, she truly deserves it.

“The event made us realise that we were already doing some brilliant work at Old Shenfield Place and just need to shout about it more.

“We have big plans next year to put more of our amazing staff members and our home forward for these types of awards.”

The Essex Care Sector Awards takes place every year to recognise individuals who go above and beyond in delivering outstanding care services within the region.

What To Consider When Choosing A Staff Attack System For Care Settings With reports revealing up to 85% of care workers experience abuse each year and thousands of serious attacks on carers recorded, the need for reliable, efficient staff attack systems in care settings has never been greater.

Protecting care workers is vital for staff morale and productivity, but also patient care and long-term treatment outcomes.

Choosing the right staff alarm system, therefore, requires careful consideration, and the weighing up of the following factors.

Staff alarm systems for care workers should be simple-to-use and easily accessible. In the face of hostility or violence, carers should be able to activate their personal alarm quickly and without alerting the aggressor.

This was a key factor in the development of Pinpoint’s new P2 System, which benefits from a more sophisticated, discreet design. Worn on the staff member’s uniform, the P2 personal alarm is lightweight and easy to use. Employees simply press a button on the device to call for assistance and in more high-risk situations where a service user is becoming aggressive, the worker pulls a pin from the bottom of the device to sound an emergency alarm.

EFFICIENCY & SPEED Quick intervention is crucial when preventing a violent attack. In care settings, patients may become aggressive suddenly, with little to no warning.

The most effective staff attack systems work rapidly, allowing employees to summon assistance quickly and easily should they face abusive behaviour from a service user.

ROBUSTNESS Vandalism of safety systems is not uncommon in high-risk work settings, as service users can tamper with or abuse the devices out of frustration. Choosing a robust safety system is therefore an important and cost-effective measure for

PRECISE

care homes.

Equally, the accuracy of a staff safety system is a key consideration. When an alarm is triggered, the response team should be informed of the exact location of the call – allowing for rapid intervention and thus prevention of harm.

This is particularly true for large facilities with multiple floors and rooms, and in cases where multiple alarms have been activated simultaneously. Pinpoint’s latest P2 Graphical Display Unit, for example, clearly demonstrates the call level and precise location of incidents on rotation, enabling responders to allocate support as required.

FOLLOW UP SUPPORT

USER-FRIENDLY

When looking into staff attack systems, it’s wise to consider how much follow-up support is offered by the provider, the length of the warranty period available, and whether repairs or assistance with maintenance issues is available. Doing this from the outset will prevent problems later down the line!

As rates of violence toward staff in Care settings increase, so too does the need for powerful, efficient staff safety systems. Choosing the right system will depend on the environment in question, the security needs of the staff and the threat posed by service users. Keeping the above factors in mind will serve as useful guidance for facilities looking to make the best choice for the safety of their employees.

Interested in learning more about Pinpoint’s P2 System? Visit www.pinpoint.ltd.uk/staff-safety-system

PAGE 14 | THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023

Unlocking The Benefits Of Time Outdoors

Alice Mitroi, Home Manager at The Royal Alfred Seafarers’ Society discusses the importance of outdoor spaces on residents’ mental health and wellbeing.

Spending quality time outdoors is crucial for people of all ages, but it holds particular significance for people in the later stages of life.

Being outdoors is a great way of encouraging older adults to engage in physical activity, such as walking, gardening, or light exercises. Regular movement is vitally important for older adults, as it helps improve strength, flexibility, balance, and overall mobility. Additionally, it can reduce the risk of chronic conditions like heart disease, obesity, and osteoporosis.

For me, one of the greatest benefits of exercise is the feeling it gives you.

Exercise helps to release feel-good chemicals into our brains, such as serotonin which helps to boost our mood. Regular exercise is even prescribed to help treat mild cases of depression and improve individuals’ overall mental health and wellbeing.

As well as the noticeable health benefits, spending time outdoors can also create opportunities for socialisation and connection with others.

Participating in group activities or simply enjoying outdoor spaces with friends and family can strengthen relationships and foster a sense of community, something that is very important in older adults. Exposure to natural light and outdoor environments can also regulate the sleep-wake cycle and improve sleep quality in the elderly. Spending time outside during the day can help regulate circadian rhythms, leading to better sleep patterns and overall restful sleep. And as we all know, there’s nothing better than a good night sleep.

Another benefit of getting fresh air is improved cognitive stimulation. Nature walks, birdwatching, garden-

ing, and other outdoor hobbies can help improve memory, attention span, and cognitive function.

Here at the Royal Alfred Seafarers’ Society’s nursing care home, Belvedere House, we are lucky to be situated within 14 acres of our own beautiful Surrey greenbelt countryside, so our staff and residents are able to get outdoors every day. Given the age and ill health of many of our residents, time outdoors is often in the form of an accompanied walk or wheelchair ride up to our Northfield Pond site where residents love to visit with family or care staff to bird watch or simply enjoy the beautiful flowers and surroundings.

Our estates team ensures that outdoor space is accessible for all at the Society and that residents who require a wheelchair can still reap the benefits of being outside in the fresh air and relax in our idyllic grounds. As a charity specialising in the care of former seafarers and their dependents, we have plenty of maritime memorabilia on site to make residents feel at home and prompt them to share life experiences. We also make the most of our grounds and hold events outdoors, including annual Open Days, exercise activities and games so our residents and can soak up the surroundings, and in pre-pandemic times, encouraged families and friends to join us too.

At Belvedere House, we’re advocates for outdoor activity because we know it provides a welcome boost for our mental and physical wellbeing. Care homes should take full advantage of the outdoor space around them to help support care plans for their residents, particularly the elderly.

Whilst not all care homes are lucky enough to be surrounded by as much outdoor space as we are, particularly those in cities, spots of natural beauty can be found up and down the UK, even if it’s a local park. In the hectic lives that we lead today, it is vital we take time to reflect and to prioritise our emotional and physical wellbeing, and what better way to so this than by embracing the power of mother nature.

Dedicated Home Care Staff Celebrate Success At Care South’s Annual Awards Ceremony Care South celebrated the outstanding achievements of its home care staff at its annual Stars Awards ceremony on Thursday 13th July at AFC Bournemouth’s Vitality Stadium.

Now in its 14th year, the Stars Awards recognise and reward individuals and teams from across the company for their outstanding achievements and excellent care provision. They are an important event during which time is taken to celebrate care staff and thank them for their frontline duties and commitment to residents.

Nominees are put forward by colleagues, service users and relatives.

Awards on the day included Carer of the Year, Care Supervisor of the Year, Rising Star, Management Team of the Year and Pride in your Service. The ceremony was held at AFC Bournemouth’s Vitality Stadium with Care South’s Chairman, Chris Kean and Chief Executive, Simon Bird hosting care homes and Care South at Home offices who had been named as finalists.

Whilst the Care South at Home offices enjoy some friendly competition and there must be a winner, it was not an easy decision for judges as the highquality of care and feedback from clients and their loved ones across board is second to none. Care South Office of the Year was presented to Crewkerne this year for a number of factors including training compliance, staff retention, testimonials and consistently meeting its KPIs and delivering fantastic care day-in, day-out.

Simon Bird, Chief Executive at Care South, said: “We are delighted to have celebrated all the achievements of colleagues at Care South at our fourteenth Care South Stars Awards. I am always so proud to see the passion and commitment to care delivered day in, day out by our staff across the company.

Nominations were received from colleagues, clients and relatives and the Care South Stars Awards provide us with the chance to publicly acknowledge and thank our staff for all their dedication and hard work.”

Number of Care Home Residents Increased says ONS The number of residents in care homes has increased by 3% according to the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures, with almost four in 10 care home residents are self funding their stay, an increase of almost 10%.

ONS figures reveal that from 1 March 2022 to 28 February 2023, there was a statistically significant 3.1% increase in the number of care home residents (372,035); of these, 37.0% (137,480) were self-funders, which is not a significant change since last year.

The South East remained the region with the highest proportion of self-funders in care homes (47.5%), which is statistically significantly higher than the North East, which had the lowest proportion of self-funders (26.4%).

Care homes providing care for older people remained the care homes with the highest proportion of self-funders (48.9%), which was statistically significantly higher than all other care home types; care homes for younger adults remained the lowest (2.0%).

Smaller care homes, with 1 to 19 beds, remained the care homes with the lowest proportion of self-funders (12.0%), which is statistically significantly lower than all other care home sizes.

Of care homes with ratings, care homes rated outstanding remained the care homes with the highest proportion of self-funders (50.9%), which was statistically significantly higher than care homes rated inadequate, which remained the lowest (24.0%).

Case Study: Bathing Cushion Has Enabled Carers To Bathe A Man Who Was Previously Afraid Of Water Staff at a Yorkshire assisted living complex can deliver dignified, safe, supported personal hygiene to a man with dementia via Aqua Liberty- a unique bathing support system The gentleman lives in supported accommodation and receives 24 hr care.

He has recently been diagnosed with dementia and has complex mental and physical disabilities. He is non-verbal and is hoisted for all transfers. He has high muscle tone in his arms and legs which mean he benefits from being immersed in water. He previously enjoyed baths when he lived at home, and this is something his family told the care team that he loved.

Since moving into supported accommodation and being diagnosed with dementia, staff had been unable to support him to shower as he became distressed when the water hit his body.

He would hit out at the people supporting him. Staff tried to lower him into the bath via the ceiling track hoist but as soon as his body contacted the water, he became distressed.

Staff had therefore been strip washing daily on the bed, which was also distressing for this man due to the number of movements required whilst he was lying on the bed.

The Occupational Therapist involved in the man’s case, Julie Snowden from Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust, felt that there were some issues with proprioception and him feeling unsafe and disorientated when he didn’t know where his body was in space. He also needed postural support as his core stability was poor, and he benefited greatly from the feeling of being safe and ‘cocooned’.

Julie suggested trying AAT’s Aqua Liberty vacuum posture support system, hoisting him slowly into the bath

with the bath cushion already in place.

Aqua Liberty is the only vacuum support cushion system that fits any bath and any user. It is also unique in being developed in the UK in partnership with individuals with a disability and Occupational Therapists.

The lightweight adjustable system comprises a central, flexible backpiece that fits any bath. It is quick and easy to secure into position, and to remove. Any of a range of “mix and match” vacuum posture cushions is then easily attached to the backpiece, to provide infinitely remouldable, adjustable pressure-free support for the bather.

In this case, a Comfortable Plus cushions was used. Combining a corset and and seat in one, the Comfortable Plus Duo delivers correct torso and pelvis positioning, stabilising her vertically and laterally, holding her in place without pressure. By making use of vacuum technology, the cushion can be precisely altered by carers to deliver optimal comfort as needed, without pressure points.

Commented Julie: “Although he initially became slightly worried, once his body came into contact with the bath cushion and he was sitting in it, he became visibly relaxed. Staff were able to support him to bathe for the first time! Bathing with the Aqua Liberty is now an essential part of his routine; a bath helps him to relax, reduces muscle tone, aids digestion and is something he now thoroughly enjoys.”

To find out more about the Aqua Liberty system, including booking of free no obligation assessments, visit https://www.aatgb.com/aqua-liberty/. On AAT’s website www.aatgb.com you can also arrange a free trial of the system, and ask any questions via LiveChat.

THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023 | PAGE 15

Care Waiting Lists Down But “Care Needs” Increasing Survey Reveals New findings from a survey of social care leaders reveals that short-term funding boosts from Government has helped reduce the number of people waiting for care and increased support for people at home, however, increases in care delivered are not keeping pace with increased needs, according to a report by the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS).

Despite the progress, care waiting lists remain far too high and ADASS is warning could rise again this winter without more staff. And a record NHS backlog, rising mental health needs, support around domestic abuse of people with care and support needs, and carer breakdown means most councils are not confident they can offer the minimum social care support in their communities required by law.

To improve social care, boost our economy and enable carers to continue working, social care leaders are calling on the Government to commit to: • Invest in support that helps people avoid the need to go to hospital or a care home, and support for people to recover, get back on their feet and back home after hospital during this winter • Increase support to carers and improve workforce pay: international recruitment is not a long term fix • a fully funded, long-term plan to transform social care to ensure everyone in England can get the care and support they need when they need it.

A huge effort by social care teams to rebuild services after the challenges of Covid 19, has reduced care waiting lists from a high watermark of 542,000 in April 2022 to 430,000 at the end of March 2023. But that means the health and wellbeing of many thousands of people continues to deteriorate while they wait for assessments, care or direct payments. Some will end up having to go to hospital or a care home instead, undermining their independence and costing the NHS and councils much more in the long run. We’ll likely go into this winter with waiting lists still higher than in 2021 and these could rise further during the winter.

INCREASE IN NUMBERS NEEDING SOCIAL CARE

The survey shows that in the battle to free up NHS acute beds, council social care teams are needing to support more people coming out of hospital with complex health and support needs. Three quarters of councils say the size of care packages for people being discharged from hospital – the number of hours and numbers of carers they need - has increased. Over half say they’ve seen an increase in the numbers of people needing social care due to delays to hospital admissions or not being admitted at all. 81 per cent of Directors either strongly agreed or agreed that increased NHS pressures will lead to adult social care taking responsibility for services which previously the NHS would have arranged or delivered.

Social care leaders report a growing need for social care support to help people with poor mental health, homelessness and domestic abuse in our communities. 81% of Directors report an increase in the number of people approaching their council with mental ill health, 51% have seen a rise in rough sleepers needing help, and 64% report a rise in domestic abuse relating to people with care and support needs.

Family and unpaid carers are bearing the brunt of an under-resourced and over-stretched system - carer burnout was the number one reason Directors gave for breakdown in unpaid carer arrangements. A further 91 per cent of Directors said that unpaid carers are coming forward with increased levels of need in their local area. It is likely that as more people reach crisis point, there will also be a rise in carers forced to reduce hours or leave work. Once again, this data demonstrates the importance of social care in supporting

people to continue working, which has the potential to further boost the economy.

RETENTION OF CARE STAFF 'CHALLENGING'

Findings reveal recruitment and retention of care staff remains a challenge and continues to undermine progress. This is despite some difference being made through recruitment of care workers from other countries which, though welcome, is unsustainable. Whilst there’s been significant increase in the delivery of homecare hours since the pandemic, over half a million hours of homecare were unable to be delivered across the English regions due to lack of staff. This is equivalent to around £14.7 million worth of care that could have helped people stay independent at home, supporting carers and providing jobs.

Social care leaders say they are caught in a vicious cycle, struggling to prioritize support to keep people healthy, independent and working, so they can continue to contribute to the economy and their communities. It would also reduce the number of people with higher needs in future. This is being exacerbated by the lack of capacity in NHS community health services, leaving more people becoming unwell and going to hospital or into a care home. The survey reveals that more councils overspent on their adult social care budget last year and there was a worrying increase in those relying on reserves to fund these pressures. Directors have had to identify an increased level of savings from their social care budgets for 2023/24. putting further pressure on the support they can offer people.

Last year we spent £19bn on adult social care in England, employing 1.5m people – more than the NHS – and it contributed £51.5bn to the economy. But the impact that has on people’s lives and the wider economy is being undermined because councils can’t spend more on preventing people from getting ill in the first place. They are having to focus more funds on providing complex care to people coming out of hospital, or increasingly people who should be admitted to hospital but are having their treatment delayed.

In response to the findings, Beverley Tarka, President of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services said: “Our findings show that a short-term funding boost from the Government and the hard work social care teams have done to rebuild services after the pandemic is making a difference to thousand of people needing support and care, but we’re not out of the woods yet. Leaders tell us they are paddling hard to keep up against a tide of increasing and complex needs .

“While the focus on people coming out of hospital is important, we need to focus more funds on keeping people independent and out of hospital in the first place so that they don’t end up needing more costly and complex medical care, which is bad for them and for the public purse.

“To meet the challenges, we need a skilled and valued workforce to do this – bringing pay in line with equivalent posts in the NHS is important first step. And we need to offer investment in training and real career prospects in the profession so we can compete with other sectors.

“In the short-term we are urging the Government to unlock the £600m social care reform funding they have held back so we can improve both staffing and support carers to help keep people in their homes. But to make real progress, we need a long-term plan for investment like the one in the roadmap we published in April, and the political will to make social care a priority over the next ten years so everyone can get the care they need, when they need it in the future.”

Long Service Awards For Three Staff Members Combines To 30-Year Service Three staff members at a Sussex home were recognised for their services with long service awards, combining to an overall service of 30 years.

Kathy, Christine and Dominik all work at MHA Lauriston and were awarded for their services to the home The trio were presented with a 10-year service award certificate as well as some gifts.

The award presentation was a surprise for the three of them, much to their delight.

The home provides residential, nursing and residential dementia care for 60 residents.

Dionne McEwan, home manager said:

“All three colleagues are a huge asset to MHA Lauriston.

“Their attitude and desire to help other staff members is second to none and I am very happy to have them as colleagues “They are a crucial part of the workforce, and we are all very proud of them for their achievement.

“I knew they were coming up to their 10year service mark so made sure we did something to mark it.

“They were very surprised, and it was something that put a smile on their faces which was great to see.

“We hope to have them here for many more years and I wish them all the best.”

Lack of Capacity and Preparedness Meant NHS Could Not Cope With Pandemic Says BMA Giving evidence at the UK Covid 19 Public inquiry, the Chair of the BMA Professor Phil Banfield spoke of how the NHS was wholly unprepared to meet the demands of the pandemic, as the medical profession were “working constantly on the premise that our system may tip over at any moment”.

Professor Banfield said: “We knew that this was unprepared for. We had no idea what was coming our way. We were suddenly in a position where not only patients were going to die, but our colleagues and ourselves were in a position where we might die because we felt so unprepared.”

Speaking as part of the session on Module 1 of the UK Covid 19 Inquiry on resilience and preparedness, the BMA chair of council said that the Association had been warning for years of a lack of capacity within the healthcare system.

Professor Banfield said: “The number of beds has been falling, the number of staff has been falling, and we have been raising concerns prior to the pandemic, that we were not coping with the capacity that was needed to run the health service – therefore there would be no surge capacity if an epic pandemic happened.”

Detailing the disconnect between local public health teams and central government since the 2012 reforms resulting from the Health and

Social Care Act, Professor Banfield warned that this had “eroded their ability to plan and scale up rapidly” during the pandemic.

He said: “In any sort of infection outbreak you need to be able to escalate things like testing for the disease, contact tracing; being able to isolate, quarantine and having expertise is incredibly important.

“They would have expected testing to become more widely available more quickly. At the point at which that didn’t happen, and testing was taken into the private sector and lighthouse labs, we started to get a disconnect of information because the IT systems were not compatible.”

As a representative of the medical professionals working throughout the pandemic, Professor Banfield spoke of the need for greater respiratory protection and said that fit testing for face masks was not taken into account prior to the pandemic. He warned that “one mask does not fit all” and that “it was predominately male faces that masks were built for”.

In relation to PPE for healthcare workers, Professor Banfield stated that under health and safety legislation there is a legal duty on employers to protect the employee from risks and there should be a legal duty to take a precautionary approach, that wasn’t taken in these circumstances and that occupational medicine has been allowed to

“collapse in this country”. He agreed, in response to questioning, that if health and safety law and guidance had been properly enforced, there would have been greater attention to detail, it would be less likely that the risk assessment process would be overlooked and flaws in the system would not be allowed to go unchallenged.

In part of Professor Banfield’s witness statement provided to the Inquiry, and read out during the hearing, he said: “In future, consideration of inequalities must be central to pandemic preparations and must be close to the heart of what is required to be done in preparation for pandemic.”

Exploring the issue of how health inequalities may be better taken into consideration in the event of future pandemics, Professor Banfield said: “Reducing health inequalities and health in all policies is one of our highlights that we wish to see. The reality is that if you are in an environment where a portion of your population is sicker than another one, and it’s due to social determinants of your health. Unless you tackle those, a specific area and subset of your population will be more vulnerable to a pandemic, or another flu pandemic which will come. It is almost inevitable. And we are duty-bound to be prepared for that.”

PAGE 16 | THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023

Green Later Living: Why Does ESG Matter In A Care Home Environment?

By Matthew Taylor, Alternative Markets Lead at Utopi (www.utopi.co.uk)

The care sector has tackled unique challenges in the past few years alone. The COVID-19 pandemic and its repercussions continue to be felt across this industry.

According to new research, the £2.1 billion of governmental financial support to the care sector in 2020 has only postponed - rather than prevented - a financial crisis for the sector. Along with workforce shortages, inflation, and soaring energy costs, 2023 has been no easier for the industry.

Amidst these issues, there are increasing conversations around ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) in the care home sector. So why - whilst there are so many other obstacles to overcome - does ESG matter in healthcare?

ESG factors have become increasingly important for companies across the health and social care industry. As organisations strive to align their operations with sustainable practices and meet the expectations of stakeholders, the availability and utilisation of accurate ESG data have emerged as critical drivers of change. Institutions within the industry must understand that ESG data can not only foster meaningful transformation but also propel the industry towards stability and long-term success.

From improving resident well-being, staffing issues, and asset value to helping the industry reduce energy costs and raise funding, ESG can play a vital role in helping the care sector overcome its unique challenges.

COST-SAVING IN AN ENERGY CRISIS With today's challenging economic climate, care homes face the dual pressures of rising energy prices and the need to drive cost savings. As energy costs continue to escalate, it becomes crucial for care home operators to explore innovative strategies that can help mitigate these financial burdens. One of the most effective strategies could be to reduce energy wastage. Organisations need real-time data on where their energy is consumed to do this. This real-time information can further enable them to analyse and cut any unnecessary energy consumption - such as in communal areas.

With the advent of real-time data reporting, care homes now have the opportunity to gain increased visibility into their energy usage patterns and make informed decisions to reduce energy waste.

To effectively manage these aspects, it is crucial to have access to accurate and comprehensive ESG data. By bringing together ESG data, care homes are provided with easy-to-use reports that can help boost their Care Quality Commission (CQC) ratings and enable them to monitor their ongoing environmental performance.

GIVING BACK CONTROL OVER RESIDENT WELLBEING In the ever-evolving landscape of care homes, incorporating the latest innovations is essential to ensuring the safety and well-being of residents. With the introduction of real-time alert systems, care homes can proactively safeguard against avoidable harm and respond swiftly to any potential risks.

By leveraging the latest solutions, care home operators can track and control various aspects including temperature, air quality, and humidity levels of individual rooms as well as communal spaces. This control then allows for the regulation of heating in individual rooms, turning it off when the temperature is too hot

and increasing it when the temperature is too cold. By effectively controlling room temperature within a permissible range, you gain significant improvements to resident well-being. Without this technology in place, residents often resort to opening windows to cool down the temperature, which not only has adverse effects but also results in heating systems running around the clock, leading to unnecessary energy waste.

Crucially, the ability of residents and operators to monitor and manage various aspects of a room raises both their comfort and CQC ratings. By harnessing these cutting-edge technologies, care homes can elevate their standards of care and provide a secure and nurturing environment for their residents.

FUNDING, INVESTMENT, AND ASSET VALUE According to Forbes, investors acknowledge the significance of investing in socially responsible companies, including those in the social care sector. Embracing sustainability and incorporating ESG principles can not only attract investments but also assist in achieving long-term financial stability.

By incorporating ESG factors into business practices, care homes can gain access to funding and investment opportunities that align with sustainable and responsible principles. Moreover, by improving their ESG performance, care homes can directly increase the value of their assets. This not only allows them to act financially conscious but also contributes to reducing the environmental impact of their real estate holdings.

Investors are increasingly seeking ways to demonstrate their commitment to responsible resource management. One powerful tool that has emerged is the use of comprehensive data sets, which provide evidence and impact measurement. By leveraging these real-time data sets, investors can showcase their value and progress in understanding the responsible use of resources. This contributes to combating climate change and leads to tangible benefits such as reduced operating costs and optimised resource allocation.

THE DEMAND FOR TALENT The issue of staffing in care homes has become a pressing concern in recent years. According to the Skills for Care 2022 report, there are now 165,000 vacancies in the adult social care industry, a remarkable 52% rise over the previous year. As the demand for quality care services continues to rise, care homes are faced with the challenge of attracting and retaining talented professionals.

In today's rapidly changing world, sustainability has become a top priority for individuals and organisations alike. This shift in mindset has extended to the job market, where a new generation of talent is increasingly placing importance on environmentally conscious practices. Indeed, a recent study found that “by 2029, the Millennial and Gen Z generations will make up 72 percent of the world’s workforce, compared to 52 percent in 2019. These generations place greater importance on environmental and social concerns than their predecessors do – and will expect more from employers on these issues.”

Care homes, being an integral part of our society, have the opportunity to attract this passionate and forward-thinking talent by driving ESG initiatives within their operations.

By implementing cutting-edge smart technology that exemplifies ESG practices, care facilities can not only contribute to a brighter future but also show a dedication to environmental sustainability. They may also be seen as desirable employers by workers who place a premium on sustainability in their professions.

The social care industry plays a crucial role in the well-being and support of individuals in society. As we navigate through an era of rapid technological advancements and increasing awareness about ESG issues, this industry must acknowledge the significance of sustainability and ESG principles. By proactively integrating these principles into their operations along with innovative technology, social care organisations can pave the way towards a brighter, more inclusive, and more socially responsible future for all.

Anchor Chef Of The Year Announced A chef at an Aylesbury care home has won the Anchor’s Chef of the Year Award after being announced at the final ceremony at Leeds Community College on Thursday 6 July.

Paul Thomas, a chef at Anchor’s Buckingham Lodge on Culpepper Close, went up against chefs from all 120 care homes run by Anchor, England’s largest not-for-profit care home provider.

Entrants in Anchor’s prestigious Chef of the Year Award submitted a threecourse recipe (starter, main and dessert). The best entrant from each region was picked by regional managers. These regional nominees then had their submissions voted for by Anchor colleagues across the country to pick the most appetising menus. Chefs were encouraged to use locally sourced ingredients and many even used herbs, fruits and vegetables grown at their own homes!

Points were also awarded for menus that reduced food waste, using all parts of their ingredients.

The four finalists then came together to cook their recipes in a cooking competition at Leeds Community College. With all four finalists preparing their menus in a set time then having the results sampled by judges including Anchor’s Managing Director of Care Services Rob Martin, Catering Manager Noel Finnegan, Steve McFall, Managing Director of Efoods, one of Anchor’s suppliers and sponsors alongside Bidfood and Sam Mellish, last year’s Chef of the Year winner.

In the end, though, there could only be one winner. Paul was crowned at the official ceremony later that

day. For his menu, Paul served up butternut squash panna cotta with whipped goats’ cheese and chives, dressed lambs’ lettuce with basil oil to start, a pan seared cod loin, crushed baby potatoes and spinach with charred asparagus, chorizo and caper butter for the main course and finished with a dessert of dark chocolate ganache, clotted cream, seasonal pickled fruit and chocolate soil. All the judges agreed Paul’s menu contained the perfect balance of traditional comfort and culinary excellence!

Anchor’s Managing Director of Care Services Rob Martin, who presented Paul with his award, said: “A huge well done to Paul. This year’s competition was fierce, so it says a lot about Paul’s menu and skills that he was able to deliver such an excellent set of dishes against the clock and against so many other great chefs!

“While all our homes provide fantastic quality cooking with high quality ingredients, our most important aim is to ensure our food is made with our residents’ wants and needs in mind, mitigating food waste and educating and inspiring colleagues to support and promote sustainable options.

Paul’s delicious dishes very much achieved this aim and I’ve no doubt all the residents of Anchor’s Buckingham Lodge will be celebrating his win too!”

Paul was delighted to win, saying: “I still can’t quite believe it! To make the final four was incredible but I never thought I’d win, I’m really proud to have won! I wanted to make a menu that was healthy but also tasty – and made good use of local and sustainable ingredients.”

New Evidence Linking Sight Loss To Dementia A new study suggests that sight loss in people over 71 years old may be linked to dementia. The study was in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Ophthalmology.

The researchers at the University of Michigan in the US analysed data from nearly 3,000 US citizens over 71 years old, who were part of a larger study, the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS).

This larger study tested the participants’ eyesight and recorded their scores for short-distance vision, long-distance vision and how well they were able to distinguish objects against different backgrounds. They also found out whether the participants had dementia from the NHATS study data.

What they found was that participants with sight loss were more likely to have dementia compared to people with no problems with their vision.

Up to 40% of dementia cases could be influenced by 12 risk factors which we may be able to prevent or influence, such as smoking, high blood pressure and hearing loss. Sight loss is not currently one of these 12 important risk factors, but the new evidence published today suggests that there is a link between sight loss and dementia.

Dr Susan Mitchell, Head of Policy at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “This is a crucial time for dementia research, as evidence builds about how factors such as sight loss are linked to dementia. Studies like this are crucial for identifying possible new dementia risk factors and ultimately working out how to potentially prevent some cases of dementia from happening in the first place.

“This new study provides important new evidence linking sight loss to dementia and ties in with previous studies. But this isn’t definitive, and it will be important for future studies to find out precisely what is causing this apparent link, as this will determine what, if any, potential there is for prevention. There are several possibilities – for example, diabetes is a key risk factor for dementia, and this condition can also cause vision problems. Or it might be that there are shared pathways in the brain that cause both vision loss and a decline in memory and thinking abilities.

“Some cases of sight loss are preventable, and others can be treated successfully – if this link is confirmed, this could mean people who take steps to minimise sight problems as they get older could also help reduce their risk of conditions like dementia.”

PAGE 18 | THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023

How To Write A Social Media Policy For Care Staff James Lintern, co-founder of staff management software provider, RotaCloud (http://rotacloud.com/), gives us his advice on how to write a social media policy for care staff, and how to use it to proactively minimise any potential disruption social media can cause.

“Social media plays a significant role in most people's lives nowadays, but for all its positives, it also contains risks, both for the individual and for employers. From a business perspective, one mistake can have the potential to devastate a company’s reputation, so it’s important to have a policy in place to mitigate those risks.

“From a poorly judged tweet to an inappropriate public comment, things can quickly escalate and go viral, and with people’s personal information easily available online, including where they work, it’s important that staff know how what they post can affect them at work. And while you never want to try to police what staff do in their own time, it is important for them to know that their actions can affect their employment.

“This is why having a written social media policy is vital. It helps you: Ensure your employees understand their rights and responsibilities.

Protects your business' reputation.

Helps avoid potential legal troubles like unfair dismissal claims in case of serious policy breaches.

“The scope and complexity of your social media policy can vary depending on factors such as the size and nature of your business. It could be a short section in your employee handbook or a standalone document that covers social media conduct on different platforms.

No matter its format though, you need to make sure the policy is easily accessible to your team members. And if you're adding it to an existing handbook, be sure to let your staff know about the new addition

and ask them to formally acknowledge that it has been read.

“A comprehensive social media policy should include the following key sections: Introduction: Start with a clear explanation of why the policy exists and emphasise that it is not intended to control employees' behaviour outside of work hours. Encourage open communication and address any concerns they may have.

General guidance: Remind employees that even personal social media activity can reflect on their employer. Reinforce company values, code of conduct, and discrimination policy. Stress that employees are responsible for their online behaviour on all platforms, including text, audio, and video content, and that any behaviour such as bullying, harassment or illegal content will not be tolerated and could lead to dismissal.

Confidentiality: Highlight that confidentiality agreements and data protection policies extend to social media use. Link to relevant documents and explicitly state what kind of information should never be disclosed, such as information about service users or colleagues.

Self-identifying: Unless specified in their job description, employees should generally not represent or advocate for the company online during personal time. Encourage keeping work and private lives separate by not openly identifying as employees or using work email addresses for non-work-related activities, and emphasise that company assets should not be shared without permission. If staff do choose to identify themselves as employees, advise them to include a disclaimer in their social media profiles stating that their opinions are their own.

“Remember, these are general guidelines, and the specific content of a social media policy may vary depending on the organisation's needs, but these are a good baseline to start with.

“Employers cannot (and should not) restrict their employees' personal social media usage or online expression, but it is important for businesses to protect their reputations from any potential fallout. A clear, thorough, and regularly updated social media policy should do that, by informing employees of their responsibilities and making them aware of the potential consequences.”

For more advice on how to write a social media policy for your care business, read RotaCloud’s blog here https://rotacloud.com/blog/how-to-write-a-social-media-policy/

Pupils Make Barbara’s Wish Come True When retired children’s nurse Barbara Doubtfire told the team at the nursing home where she lives in Wellington, Somerset, how much she’d like to see young people again, they were delighted by the reaction of the local primary school to their request for help.

The response from Year 5 pupils at St John’s C of E Primary was to send invitations to Barbara and other residents from Camelot House and Lodge to attend a special end-of-term tea party organised just for them.

Richard Dempslake, activities co-ordinator at Barbara’s dementia care home, said: “We asked our residents what they’d put on their bucket list – what would they like to do or experience again.

“Barbara’s wish was simple – she just wanted to enjoy some children’s company again.

“She spent her working life as a children’s nurse in a hospital in Stockton-on-Tees, in the intensive care ward, and often talks about her experiences at the hospital, telling us how much she loved taking care of children, no matter how heartbreaking it sometimes was.

“We were really touched by her wish and wanted to bring some children into her life, so I emailed St John’s school in Wellington and Sarah Brown, who teaches Lark Class, replied almost immediately with invitations from her class for Barbara to come to this special tea party at St John’s Church.

“It was such a lovely event and the children worked really hard to make it a success.

“Everyone enjoyed themselves so much and Barbara was particularly happy. It was lovely to see. Huge thanks to Mrs Brown and Lark Class for making Barbara’s wish come true.”

Sarah Brown said: “An enjoyable afternoon was had by all in Lark class at our special pupil chaplain tea party. Elderly residents within our community joined us and we shared some of our favourite books, got creative and made bookmarks, were treated to performances from our pupil chaplains including singing, acting, playing the guitar and piano and finished with enjoying some tasty treats.

“A fantastic effort by all and what a wonderful way to bring our community together.”

Blueleaf Care Acquires Nexon To Form A Single Group Blueleaf Care, the nationwide business that helps care homes deliver better outcomes, has acquired Nexon, the national distributor of cleaning, hygiene and healthcare products to form a single group. The acquisition is part of a stated strategy to become the market leader and grow the organisation to £100m turnover within the next five years.

Blueleaf benefits from the merger by gaining access to Nexon’s quality client base, niche brands, and further extending its geographic ‘reach’ in the north. Acquiring Nexon also gives it the opportunity to extend its offering beyond the ‘traditional’ care sector into new areas where Nexon is already established.

Nexon benefits significantly from the depth and breadth of Blueleaf’s product range, enabling it to offer its clients a single source for all their purchasing needs, including furniture, equipment and medical consumables, which they currently have to source elsewhere or can’t currently provide. Both sets of customers will also benefit from the greater buying power that a larger organisation can bring, to offer lower prices in many instances than would previously have been possible.

Nick Frogbrook, Group Chief Executive, says that merging the two businesses will make them stronger together: “The market is becoming increasingly competitive,” he says, “and standing still is effectively going backwards. There is a ‘first mover’ advantage in acting now; prices are continually being squeezed while

costs are rising, and a larger group will have greater buying power to benefit our customers while being able to deliver greater efficiencies through technology, infrastructure and people.”

Don Green, Director of Business Development at Nexon, who will be joining the new leadership team, says the decision will create an excellent opportunity for Nexon and its customers: “We have effectively reached our ceiling in terms of growth and what we can offer our customers,” he explains.

“By merging with Blueleaf, we will continue to partner with our clients in delivering the specialist cleaning and laundry products for which we are well known. We are looking forward to being able to offer a much broader range of consumables and equipment at competitive prices and giving our clients an even greater level of support and service by joining with the team at Blueleaf.”

Blueleaf has spent the last 12 months focusing on improving its own systems, operations infrastructure and teams and building a firm foundation on which to grow.

Initially, both businesses will continue to trade as they are and will start to come together in 2024 as Nexon's clients are moved across to Blueleaf's more scalable systems and platforms.

“Migrating Nexon’s clients onto the Blueleaf platform should be a simple case of ‘lift and drop’,” Nick continues. “Some training may be required in advance to head off any potential difficulties and realise the true benefits of the transition. Ahead of any transition, it will also be necessary to ensure operationally that the warehouse and stock are aligned and continue without any impact on clients even if the deliveries in the future may come from a different warehouse location.”

Ronnie Green (Procurement and IT) and Stephen Green (Ops Director) at Nexon will be part of a dedicated team assigned to the integration to ensure that any existing customer KPIs are met and contractual terms honoured.

Please visit: www.blueleafcare.com

THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023 | PAGE 19

Age UK Calls For Shift Towards Joined Up Health And Social Care A major new report from Age UK, ‘The State of Health and Care of Older People in England 2023’, documents how our health and care system is struggling, and too often failing, to meet the needs of our growing older population. The Charity says this shows that as a nation we need to switch away from our current over-reliance on acute hospital based care, towards a laser focus on prevention and early intervention to enable older people to stay fit and well in their own homes, and in care homes. This would be far better for older people and would also alleviate pressures on hospitals.

The new report shows how significant numbers of hospital admissions of older people could be avoided if they received help earlier on, before small health problems mushroom into crises requiring urgent clinical support. But this will only happen if there is a strong political leadership from the Government and a drive right across the NHS and local authorities to make it happen.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom as Age UK says there are glimmers of hope in some places and the beginnings of the shift it wants to see, with the development of community Falls Services, Hospital at Home services, Virtual Wards and Integrated Frailty Services. At present though these new approaches are only patchily available, whereas they need to be on offer to every older person, wherever they happen to live.

The Charity also points out that there will be no lasting solutions in this area until politicians grip the problems in social care, support it’s under-paid and under-appreciated workforce, and expand social care services to tackle the enormous scale of unmet care need among older people.

THE REPORT SHOWS: • In 2021/22 there were 4.8 million A&E attendances by older people.

• The rate of A&E attendances amongst over 80s went up by 40% between 2012/13 and 2021/22.

• In 2019/20 alone there were 855,000 emergency admissions to hospital of older people which could have been avoided with the right care at the right time.

Once admitted, older people have longer hospital stays and are more likely to experience delayed discharge. Over winter 2022/23, between 13,000 and 14,000 patients were stranded in hospital on any given day, up from around 4,500 in the same period in 2018/19. 1 In 6 patients over the age of 75 is then readmitted within 30 days of being discharged – a terrible vicious circle.

In many areas at present there are too few effective, joined up health and care services capable of identifying older people at risk of a health emergency and intervening to help them avoid it. The statistics picked out below tell a clear story: significant numbers of older people are finding it difficult to access the support they need from their GP, and we know there aren’t enough nurses working in the community in either the NHS or social care. In addition, rather than expanding to meet the needs of growing numbers of older people, State funded social care has gone backwards in terms of the numbers being helped. This in turn is placing more burden and responsibility on unpaid carers – usually families – to fill the gap, and leaving large numbers of older people struggling to cope alone. Inevitably in this situation their health often declines, and sometimes this leads to a hospital stay that might have been avoided.

• Between 2015 and 2020 there was a 24% reduction in the number of nursing posts in social care and 12% reduction in the number of district nursing posts.

• Since 2017/18, 36,000 fewer older people are getting long-term care from their local authority.

• An estimated 1.6 million people aged 65+ have unmet needs for care and support.

• 45% of older people were concerned about their ability to access their GP and 40% of older people did not feel they had enough support to manage their health conditions

• One in five (20%) unpaid carers are aged 65 plus and many are having to pick up many hours of support • 85% of older carers are worried about whether they would be able to keep caring or providing support.

The report draws on many more official statistics and Age UK analyses to provide a comprehensive and authoritative picture of how services are functioning today for older people across the NHS and social care. Even before the pandemic, growing numbers of older people were experiencing avoidable emergency admissions to hospital, being delayed at discharge, often because of waits for social care, and not receiving essential assistance with daily living. Then, the pandemic struck and made things considerably worse, leaving many older people today with poor mental or physical health, hospitals and care services under immense pressure and struggling to retain staff who are very tired, altogether leading to fewer older people receiving the help they need.

With 10.5 million people aged over 65 in England – and rising – the Charity says it’s imperative we change tack now, to serve older people better and to make better use of the resources within Health and Social Care. Given that only 26% of people aged 65-74 do not live with at least one long term health condition, falling to just 14% of those aged over 85 in England, the Charity says that ensuring people have the support to stay well and manage their health at home is essential to the future sustainability of the NHS.

THE REPORT CALLS FOR: • A strong strategic push, nationally and locally, to reverse the decline of primary and community health services and social care, so many more older people get more help, earlier, enabling them to stay well for longer at home and reducing their reliance on crisis health care in hospitals.

• More community-based services to be developed and joined up in local areas so they include doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, social care staff, among others, and the voluntary sector too, working closely with GPs and their practice teams. These services also need to be able to flex to respond to older people’s and their unpaid carers’ needs, especially where the latter are themselves older people, as in the case of older couples.

• The principle of ‘home first’ as the foundation of our approach to health and social care for older people now and into the future.

Paul Farmer CBE, Chief Executive of Age UK said, “In many ways the picture painted by our new report is deeply depressing, but what strikes me the most is the wonderful opportunity we have now to switch to a much more effective approach to providing health and social care services for older people in their own homes and in care homes. After all, if we don’t do it on the back of findings like these, when will we? It’s clear that we need services to reach out to older people much sooner, particularly those living at home, quite often alone, whose health is fragile or declining. This would not only be great news for older people, and their families, providing much needed reassurance, it would be cost-effective too. And it would go a long way to relieving the enormous pressure on hospitals as well.

“Sometimes older people do need to go to hospital of course, but at the moment too many are doing so for want of the help they need at home. Then if they are admitted they are at risk of getting stuck in a hospital bed once medically fit to leave. That’s incredibly miserable for them and also jeopardises their recovery.

“We must do better by our older population and I’m sure we can. For example, some of the new Hospital at Home services and Virtual Wards are great – we just need a lot more of them, everywhere – with voluntary organisations like Age UK playing a full part alongside others.”

104-Year-Old Chislehurst Care Home Resident Takes On Race For Life Care home resident Annie Hardy, who turned 104 in June, has taken

Resident Marguerite Brosnahan, aged 84, overcame her battle with can-

on Cancer Research’s Race for Life in Blackheath alongside her fellow

cer over 40 years ago and was determined to walk across the finishing

residents and staff members of RMBI Care Co. Home Prince George

line by herself and ring the bell. Collectively the team raised over £1400

Duke of Kent Court, in Chislehurst.

with Gift Aid towards Cancer Research’s valuable work.

Three residents and 12 staff members donned personalised pink t-

Nina Stephens, Home Manager, said: “It was a magical day! When

shirts, tutus and sun hats and set off on their Home’s minibus to take

Annie’s name was called out over the microphone we received huge

part in the 3k event on Blackheath Common on Sunday 25 June.

At 104, the event’s organisers welcomed Annie when the team arrived and announced she was the oldest participant in the race.

cheers from the crowds, which was encouraging for the whole team to push on through the heat.

Resident, Annie Hardy, said, “I had a fantastic time. People were

Throughout the race crowds cheered Annie on as the Home’s Business

waving and wishing me luck the whole way around; I was treated like

Relationship Manager, Fiona Hodges, pushed her in her wheelchair.

royalty!”

10,000 Care Homes Supported by MAG Laundry Equipment MAG Laundry Equipment, suppliers of commercial washing machines and tumble

MAG also provides care homes with free ozone sanitisation and ozone generators to

dryers, is proud to have supported more than 10,000 care homes across the UK in their

eliminate unpleasant odours. Rooms are left sanitised, smelling fresh and free from

latest milestone.

harmful bacteria and viruses.

Clean bedding and laundry is essential for care homes, hospices, nursing homes and

You have peace-of-mind that your care home laundry machines can quickly be

other healthcare organisations. With a nationwide fleet of accredited engineers MAG

maintained and repaired as MAG Laundry Equipment supply, install and service equip-

Laundry Equipment has successfully assisted over ten thousand care homes with their

ment across England, Scotland and Wales.

products, services, information and support.

MAG’s product range includes commercial washing machines, tumble dryers, ironers,

If you are looking for high quality wash results that remove stubborn stains then speak with MAG for their recommendations. Complete thermal disinfection is a standard

presses and detergents. For 100 years, since 1922, MAG’s products have been devel-

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oped and improved to become some of the most reliable, energy-efficient and afford-

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able machines on the market.

https://maglaundryequipment.co.uk/sectors/nursing-care-homes/

PAGE 20 | THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023

Why We Must Keep Taking Data-Driven Steps Forward John Lanyon, Co-Founder of KareInn (www.kareinn.com), reviews the Government’s updated roadmap for better data for adult social care and discusses how data is helping care homes meet their Adult Social Care Outcomes Framework objectives. with the important targets care homes must reach.

ALIGNING WITH THE ASCOF The Adult Social Care Outcomes Framework (ASCOF) measures how well care and support services achieve the outcomes that matter most to people. The framework plays a crucial role in ensuring the quality, transparency, and accountability of adult social care services.

By setting clear objectives, measuring performance, and providing a framework for evaluation, the ASCOF encourages care providers to identify areas for improvement, implement changes, and monitor the impact of their interventions. This drives a culture of learning and innovation, ultimately leading to better outcomes for service users.

If we break down the benefits of digital, and specifically data driven decision-making, we can see just how it supports care homes in reaching their ASCOF targets, and how it will help them along the Government’s data roadmap.

DEVELOPING PERSONALISED CARE The Government recently updated its roadmap for better data for adult social care, describing the plan as an important step in addressing transformation.

In the updated roadmap, the Minister of State for Care said that while some care providers, local authorities and other organisations are trailblazers in the use of data, digital tools and technology, overall adult social care as a sector lags behind healthcare: “while we have come a long way in improving the data that we collect and use, there is still much more to do”.

We are seeing every day how tech in care homes is helping to improve resident satisfaction and maximise operational efficiency.

From improved communication, enhanced resident safety and wellbeing, streamlined operations, and a facility for data-driven decision-making, the sector is slowly but surely seeing the benefits of digital. But to keep up with the pace of change, any transformation needs to align

We’re seeing digital care records enable care homes to capture and store comprehensive information about each resident's needs, preferences, and goals. This information can be used to develop personalised care plans and ensure that care is tailored to individual requirements. By leveraging digital care records effectively, care homes can improve care planning, documentation, communication, and monitoring of outcomes. This, in turn, supports the objectives of the ASCOF, promoting person-centred care, accountability, quality improvement, and the overall wellbeing of residents.

Digital care records allow care homes to track and monitor outcomes related to the ASCOF measures. By recording and analysing data on service user feedback, quality of life indicators, and other relevant metrics, care homes can evaluate the effectiveness of their interventions and make evidence-based improvements to their care practices.

CREATING AN AUDIT TRAIL

Digital care plans help care homes meet regulatory requirements and demonstrate compliance with relevant standards. These records provide a documented audit trail of care interventions, ensuring transparency, accountability, and adherence to best practices in care provision.

Digital can also streamline the documentation process by providing a centralised platform for recording care interventions, assessments, and outcomes. This ensures that documents are completed efficiently and accurately, supporting effective communication among care teams, and ensuring the continuity of care.

A FACILITY FOR INTEGRATED CARE Crucially, digital care records facilitate efficient and secure information sharing among care professionals, residents, and their families.

Individuals can access up-to-date information about a resident's care plan, medications, allergies, and other relevant details, enhancing communication and collaboration across the care team.

The wealth of data that is created by digital care planning can be analysed to identify patterns, trends, and areas for improvement. Care homes can generate reports and dashboards based on this data, enabling them to monitor performance, measure progress, and identify areas where they can enhance the quality of care and outcomes.

Data and the insights they provide are fundamental to ensuring that people who draw on care and support can access high quality care and achieve the outcomes that matter to them. Digital care records play a significant role in helping care homes meet the objectives of the ASCOF. As the Government’s roadmap states, we are embarking on farreaching reforms. But we as a sector must continue to champion data and its benefits, to drive social care forward at the right pace. We must continue to champion evidence-based digital technology, and its ability to deliver end-of-life altering care and personalised services that address persistent unmet needs across residential care.

Residents Travel to France from Comfort of Armchair at Altrincham Home Residents at an Altrincham home packed their bags and boarded the plane to France from the comfort of their armchairs.

The trip took place at MHA Handsworth, which provides residential care for 43 residents Boarding passes and passports were prepared with one of the lounges at the home being used to create France.

The lounge was decorated with French flags with French delicacies and non-alcoholic wine also part of the trip.

There was a tour of Paris via the home’s tiny tablet, which was enjoyed by all.

Charlotte Fowke, activity coordinator said: “ This was an idea I used at a different job and was always looking to start here at MHA Handsworth.

“Residents are unable to travel so I wanted to create an exciting

activity for them.

“Everyone had a great time, we made sure we had plenty of different French food items for the residents to try which was good.

“For some residents it was a first and for others it was something they hadn’t tried for a while.

“This is something I want to do more often and have already planned to do something for next month.

“The next trip will focus on South Asian Heritage Month and look into the different countries in that part of the world.

“The residents had a great time, it was a very successful trip and I hope the others to follow will be the same.

Diamond Life As Care Home Ladies Relax To Sweet Sounds At Country Estate Residents from a dedicated dementia care home had a taste of luxury when they enjoyed afternoon tea in the grounds of a country estate complete with a choir performance just for them.

A party of eight ladies from Colten Care’s Linden House in Lymington wore summer dresses and straw sun hats for the trip to historic Beaulieu in the New Forest.

Over blueberry pie and fruit salad, they listened to the sixteen-strong Diamond Divas sing a selection of light music and songs from the shows interspersed with Beatles and Abba favourites.

Linden House resident Joan Porrett said: “We had such a lovely afternoon

and we thank everyone involved for making it happen.”

The visit took place close to an estate cottage and was arranged through personal contacts of Natasha Nilsen, a member of Linden House’s Companionship team.

In return for their exclusive performance, the Divas, based in Highcliffe, Dorset, collected a donation of £70 towards their charity Macmillan Caring Locally.

The money adds to a grand total of more than £55,000 raised for Macmillan through choir shows over the past twelve years.

Chris Dimmick, Companionship Team Leader at Linden House, said: “The residents had a lovely time. They really enjoyed it.”

THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023 | PAGE 21

Celebrating Afternoon Tea Week A Beloved British Tradition That Nurtures the Well-being of Our Elderly Population

It’s almost time to celebrate Afternoon Tea Week, which takes place between August 7August 13 Yes, that quintessential British tradition which holds a special place in the hearts of many, is almost here.

Steeped in history and elegance, this cherished occasion provides a unique opportunity for communities, families and friends to come together, savour delectable treats, and celebrate the joy of human connection. For our elderly population, particularly those in residential and nursing care Afternoon Tea Week takes on an even more profound significance, as we here at THE CARER proved last year when we had a wonderful response to our “share your Afternoon Tea Week celebrations with us”.

Beyond its delicious offerings, this great British tradition fosters a sense of continuity, community, and mental well-being for our seniors, creating cherished memories and brightening their lives.

EMBRACING TRADITION: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF AFTERNOON TEA WEEK In the United Kingdom, Afternoon Tea Week is a cherished annual event that typically falls in August.

Originating in the 19th century, this tradition was introduced by Anna, the 7th Duchess of Bedford, who desired a light meal to tide her over between lunch and dinner. The concept quickly caught on and evolved into an afternoon social affair, complete with finger sandwiches, scones, cakes, and, of course, a comforting cup of tea.

Today, Afternoon Tea Week provides an opportunity for people of all ages to come together and indulge in the elegance and nostalgia of a bygone era. For the elderly population, especially those in care homes, this tradition can evoke cherished memories of past gatherings and instil a sense of continuity and belonging. It also offers a chance for them to impart their knowledge of customs and etiquette to younger generations, bridging the gap between the old and the new.

FOSTERING COMMUNITY AND CONNECTION In residential care settings, community-building activities are crucial for the well-being of the residents. Afternoon Tea Week offers a perfect occasion to bring everyone together in a warm and welcoming setting. Sharing a delightful afternoon tea allows residents to bond with one another, staff members, and even family visitors. The sense of camaraderie and unity forged during these moments contributes to a happier and more fulfilling living experience for the elderly.

PROMOTING MENTAL WELLBEING Furthermore, Afternoon Tea Week provides an uplifting and enjoyable experience that can positively impact residents' emotional well-being.

Engaging in the ritual of afternoon tea can stimulate reminiscence, spark conversation, and elicit smiles and laughter, all of which contribute to a more positive outlook on life. The calming effects of tea and the soothing ambiance can also help reduce

stress and anxiety, promoting mental wellness among the residents.

SHARE YOUR CELEBRATIONS! Afternoon Tea Week is more than just an indulgence in delightful treats; it is a cherished British tradition that holds immense significance for our elderly population, especially those in residential care. By embracing this tradition, care homes can foster a sense of continuity, build community and connection among residents, and promote their mental well-being.

So, we here at THE CARER would be delighted to share your Afternoon Tea Week celebrations with our considerable readership!

We have a wonderful prize for the lucky Care Home winner, so please do send in photographs and a paragraph or two of what you did to celebrate this wonderful great British tradition and let us all savour the joy of coming together, cherish the memories of the past, and create new ones that will warm our hearts for years to come!!

Simply email us at

nominate@thecareruk.com for your

Tips and Advice for Celebrating Afternoon Tea Week in Care Homes 1. Decoration and Ambiance: Create an inviting atmosphere reminiscent of a classic tearoom with elegant table settings, fresh flowers, and soft background music.

2. Variety of Treats: Offer a wide assortment of finger sandwiches, freshly baked scones with clotted cream and jam, and a selection of scrumptious cakes and pastries to suit different tastes.

3. Incorporate Traditional Tea Etiquette: Take the opportunity to educate residents on traditional tea etiquette, such as holding the teacup with the pinky down, stirring the tea gently, and using the saucer.

4. Special Tea Blends: Consider offering a variety of tea blends, including some with calming properties like chamomile or peppermint, to promote relaxation.

5. Interactive Activities: Organize fun activities like a hat competition or a quiz on tea-related trivia to engage residents and stimulate their minds.

6. Involvement of Staff and Family: Encourage care home staff and family members to participate in the celebrations, creating a sense of togetherness and solidarity.

chance to win!

Serve Afternoon Tea in Style with Euroservice Watch your resident's eyes light up when the beautiful tea trolley arrives!

Euroservice trolleys can also be used as a vending trolley or to sell personal care products to residents. How about a delicious snack/pastry trolley or even a drinks trolley for that afternoon tipple?

Your lovely trolley could do so much for you and your residents!

Visit the website at www.euroservice-uk.com to see the full range.

Manufactured in the UK

Freephone: 0800 917 7943 www.euroservice-uk.com sales@euroservice-uk.com

PROVIDING PRACTICAL AND STYLISH TROLLEYS TO SUIT YOUR NEEDS Watch your resident's eyes light up when the beautiful tea trolley arrives! Euroservice trolleys can also be used as a vending trolley or to sell personal care products to residents.

How about a delicious snack/pastry trolley or even a drinks trolley for that afternoon tipple?

Your lovely trolley could do so much for you and your residents!

Euroservice trolleys are an attractive and practical alternative to clinical aluminium trolleys given that antibacterial spray can be used freely to sanitise them.

Get in touch with our friendly, experienced sales team

Visit the website at

www.euroservice-uk.com to see the full range.

PAGE 22 | THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023

The Benefits Of Dance For Dementia – Promoting Positive Connections And Increasing Mental Well-Being Keen to bring some exercise innovation and variety to the lives of people in the care home she works for, Chloe Morrisey, Activities Co-Ordinator at Orchard Care Homes’ Penwortham Grange and Lodge, Preston, draws on her dance background to get everyone moving. Here, Chloe explains the benefits of dance for all and how it can help to build connection and confidence amongst those living with dementia.

I am a great believer in exercise for life for all. Exercise is important for our physical and mental well-being. It can improve strength, flexibility, balance, and coordination, as well as reduce the risk of chronic health conditions like heart disease, diabetes, and obesity.

I’ve seen how dance can really benefit those in care homes, proving that exercise at any time of life is vital to enhance the fitness levels of people of all ages, shapes, and sizes.

At Penwortham Lodge and Grange, I have been delivering bespoke dance workshops and activities for everyone at our home over the past two years and have noticed an improvement in overall psychological and mental well-being - which is especially important for those with dementia.

Dance has positive effects on people with dementia as it boosts the sympathetic nervous system and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, while also enhancing neurotransmission to the brain. As a great mood lifter, dancing can help to elevate levels of serotonin, dopamine, endorphins, and norepinephrine. It plays a critical role in movement memory, enabling people living with dementia to access and express emotions and memories that are stored in the body – even though they may experience cognitive, psychological, or physical limitations. For those who have difficulty communicating verbally, movement-based communication offers a valuable alternative to show connection and expression.

During my degree in Dance Performance and Teaching at the University of Central Lancashire, I became interested in how dance activities can help people who live in care homes. I began researching ways to facilitate dance effectively in an inclusive and person-centered way – which is so important in day-to-day

life among residents. I enjoyed experimenting with different techniques and observing dance experts by shadowing various practitioners in my community, including Dr. Melanie Brierley's "Connect + Flow" session for people with Parkinson's in Preston.

These sessions were a great source of inspiration and led me to pursue a career combining care and dance.

One aspect which really appealed to me was how an individual’s physical, cognitive, emotional, social, and spiritual needs can be met through dance and the way groups can come together to express themselves.

Through working at Orchard, I have been able to implement some of these techniques and gain a deeper understanding of the individual health and mobility needs of residents so that I can tailor my dance workshops to be as inclusive as possible.

My role at Orchard gives me immense satisfaction as I get to create spaces that promote social interaction. It's wonderful to exchange skills with everyone, and I find that some people have vast experience to offer. I enjoy teaching new skills and routines and take pleasure in providing a safe and inclusive space for everyone in my well-being and somatic workshops. I always encourage everyone to explore their creativity and self-expression, aiming to strengthen connections in their mind, body, and spirit.

For people with less mobility, I adapt routines and exercises. These can include seated exercises or stretching, which helps to improve flexibility and reduce stiffness. Generally, the suggested exercise target each week for people over 65 is two and a half hours of moderate activity. However, I prefer to personalise plans to fit each person's unique needs and fitness capacities. If someone has difficulty meeting the recommended physical activity targets, I may adopt a lower intensity level or shorter time frame, then try to gradually build on this.

I’d recommend dance as a motivational booster for people in care homes – for both staff and residents alike. It’s so much fun and adds a real variety to the types of activities on offer such as craft, gardening or bingo. Whilst these are fun too, dance and music can bring back so many memories and feelings which is wonderful to see. I am really pleased to be able to combine my love of dance with my passion for care. It’s a winning combination for me!

Soldiers Visit Huddersfield Care Home on Armed Forces Day Two serving members of the 4th Battalion of the Royal Yorkshire Regiment went to Aden Lodge Care Home, on Long Lane, Clayton West, to mark the occasion.

Stephen Henderson and Jason Lingard spoke to residents about their roles in the Army, the countries they visited on duty, and the medals they have received during their careers.

Stephen, who has been in the Army for 30 years, said he had been to Canada, Africa, America, Ireland, Afghanistan, and Gibraltar, among other places.

Resident Audrey Mellor, 78, took particular interest in hearing about the monkeys in Gibraltar who stole food and personal items from passers-by.

Eunice Bedford, 90, told the soldiers about her son who had served in the Army, alongside other residents speaking of their relatives who had been in the armed forces.

Eunice said: “Stephen Henderson looks very much like my son, as my son was in the Army.”

While chatting with the residents, Stephen and Jason also helped with the refreshments trolley, serving cups of tea while answering questions.

Sarah Durham, home manager at Aden Lodge Care Home, said: “We’d like to say a massive thank you to Stephen Henderson and Jason Lingard from the 4th Battalion of the Royal Yorkshire Regiment for visiting us.

“Our residents thoroughly enjoyed meeting them, hearing about their roles in the Army, asking lots of questions, and telling them about their own relatives in the armed forces.

“It was a walk down memory lane for many, as they remembered their relatives who had served in the past.

“Armed Forces Day is an important occasion for our residents, as they remember and show their appreciation for those who have served, as well as those who continue to serve in the armed forces.”

HC-One’s Dementia Care Team Winners at National Awards

HC-One’s Dementia Care team have won the ‘Best Dementia Care Team Award’ at the 13th National Dementia Care Awards 2023 which took place during a gala awards lunch at Winchester Cathedral on Thursday 13th July.

HC-One’s Dementia Care team consists of Dementia Care Managers Annette Banks, James Ridley, Katy Jenks and Natasha Wilson, led by Tracey Carter, Head of Dementia Care.

The team provide direct clinical support, advice, mentoring and supervision to HC-One’s portfolio of 180 dementia care communities, supporting Care Home Colleagues to enable Residents to live their best lives and support their families and friends in maintaining positive, loving relationships.

The role of Dementia Care Manager (DCM) was introduced at the end of 2021 and the team operate a referral pathway process, enabling Colleagues across HC-One to refer directly into them for support and advice. After initial triage and a consultation call with the referrer, each case is allocated to a named DCM, who work with the home to plan and deliver the right type and range of support required to meet the individual needs of the home and the Residents living there.

In a relatively short period of time, this approach has enabled the team to influence strategic and cultural change, embed evidence-based practice, identify, share and celebrate good practice and help to facilitate

and grow innovation, which is resulting in meaningful outcomes for Residents and those who support them.

The team are subject matter experts and also provide clinical advice, recommendations and support to all other teams and stakeholders across HC-One, including Learning & Development, Quality Improvement, Clinical Governance and Regulatory Compliance.

Tracey Carter, Head of Dementia Care at HC-One commented: “What an amazing achievement, I am incredibly proud of all of our Dementia Care team at HC-One who go above and beyond for our Residents each day and we are delighted to win this prestigious award. “Our Dementia team are highly trained, experienced and an exceptionally resourceful team who are always available to offer advice and support. They have made a significant difference to those living with dementia in our care homes and to Colleagues who require support.”

Professor Graham Stokes, Director of Dementia Care Services at HC-One said: “Through our dementia care model, we strive to give people living with dementia the care they need and the life they want. “It is important to recognise those who work tirelessly to provide outstanding care and support Residents to live their best lives, and I’m delighted that HC-One’s Dementia Care team has been recognised through these awards.”

THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023 | PAGE 23

Modern Slavery: What Do Employers Need to Know?

The BBC has reported that the number of modern slavery cases reported within the UK care industry has more than doubled in the past year1, with 109 potential victims between January and March who were exploited for personal or financial gain. This is twice as many as the same period in 2022.

But what does this mean for social care employers? Paul Kelly, Head of Employment law at Blacks Solicitors, discusses what the Act is and how care employers can use it to protect and support anyone working in the sector who is being exploited through slavery.

WHAT IS MODERN SLAVERY AND THE MODERN SLAVERY ACT? Modern slavery can be defined as someone who is moved by force, fraud, coercion or deception to be exploited. Globally, almost 50 million people currently live as slaves, and in the UK alone there are estimated to be over 100,000 victims of modern slavery2. The Modern Slavery Act was created in 2015 to consolidate historic trafficking and slavery offences to combat modern slavery in the UK. The Act focuses on protecting victims as well as punishing those responsible for forced labour, slavery or human trafficking.

From an employer’s perspective, the Act was brought in to ensure that businesses across every sector, including social care, are transparent about the way they tackle modern slavery and human trafficking.

WHAT DOES THE ACT ENSURE? Section 54 of the Act requires all commercial organisations with a global annual turnover above £36 million to prepare a slavery and human trafficking statement each financial year, ensuring that businesses are transparent about the ways they are tackling modern slavery.

The statement must set out all the required steps that businesses take to make sure human trafficking

has not occurred within its supply chain or the business in general. Organisations who turn over less than £36 million annually can decide whether or not they wish to make a voluntary statement.

The Act ensures victims receive protection by: • Creating a statutory defence for victims of modern slavery so that they are not inappropriately criminalised; • Giving the courts new powers to order perpetrators of slavery and trafficking to pay Reparation Orders to their victims; • Providing child advocates to support child victims of trafficking; • Extending special measures so that all victims of modern slavery are sufficiently supported through the criminal justice process; • Providing statutory guidance on victim identification and victim services, including an enabling power to put the relevant processes on a statutory basis; and • Introducing protections for victims of abuse on an overseas domestic worker visa.

WHAT DOES THE ACT MEAN FOR BUSINESSES? Currently, there are no criminal penalties for organisations who fail to implement a modern slavery statement, although the Secretary of State can in some cases apply to the High Court for an injunction to require compliance. A failure to comply with a High Court order could result in an unlimited fine being issued.

Businesses subject to the Act need to ensure that any modern slavery statement they produce is published on the website. A failure to publish the statement is itself a failure to comply with the Act and exposes the business to the risk of sanction, such as a fine being issued. Aside from the financial penalties a business could face for failing to comply with the Act, the reputational damage a business would be exposed to if it fails to prevent modern slavery could be incalculable. Despite the statement having no criminal penalties for non compliance, it is best advised for businesses to comply to prevent reputational damage.

The Act extends to both England and Wales, but some provisions apply in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The 2019 Global Slavery Index placed the UK as the country taking the most action to respond to modern day slavery, along with France, Netherlands and Australia who all introduced legislation targeting slavery and trafficking within the last 10 years.

Dementia Carers Call for Urgently Needed Long Term Carers’ Strategy Dementia Carers Count, a national charity that supports unpaid carers looking after someone with dementia, is inviting people to show their support for carers by signing an open letter to the Minister of State for Social Care, which calls for the urgent publication of a long-term, fully funded carers’ strategy.

Over 700,000 family members and friends in the UK are caring for someone with dementia. For many it’s an overwhelming experience. Some regularly find themselves in crisis and describe themselves as feeling “alone”, “trapped” and “broken”.

Frances Lawrence, CEO of Dementia Carers Count, said: “While we must get healthcare right for people living with specific conditions and diseases, including dementia, we mustn’t forget about the needs of family members and friends who provide them with vital care and support. Too often, the care they give is at the expense of their own well-being.

“We are calling on the Minister of State for Social Care to urgently publish a long-term fully funded car-

ers’ strategy. This should complement plans to support people living with dementia and other serious illnesses. All carers should be able to access free condition-specific, personalised support and learning opportunities at every stage of their caring journey. For family carers caring for someone with dementia, this should include support before a diagnosis, at diagnosis, while caring for the person living with dementia, as well as specialist end of life care, and support with anticipatory grief and bereavement.

“Not only do carers deserve support for their own personal well-being, but on a societal level, if we fail to support carers, the burden on the NHS and social care services will only increase. Carers won’t be able to carry on and this will lead to worse outcomes for everyone.

“Please add your name to our call for urgently needed support for carers.”

The open letter to the Minister of State for Social Care is open for signing: https://dementiacarers.org.uk/letter/ It will be delivered to the Minister in the Autumn.

Shared Trust, Vision And Purpose Between Care Providers Amongst Key Recommendations Report Reveals The National Care Forum (NCF) hosted a roundtable on Wednesday 21st June 2023, in conjunction with the Health Service Journal (HSJ), to bring together key strategic leaders across health and social care to create shared solutions to winter pressures. The roundtable centred on several key themes that NCF’s not-for-profit provider membership believes would improve system-wide partnership working to ensure people are enabled to return to, and remain in, a place they call home more quickly, with the appropriate support and rehabilitation in place.

This includes: • The need for diversity of services to help people stay out of hospital; • A multi-disciplinary approach which joins up the adult social care and health workforce to ensure that training and delegated healthcare interventions are utilised and enable people to get the care and support they need, when they need it; • An effective use of technology and data to lead improvements in the quality of care and enable more integration; • Recognition of adult social care providers as key strategic voices in the systems to foster sustainable and partnership-oriented commissioning approaches; • Recognition that people and their families need to be involved in the development of services which they access; • A sustainable approach to commissioning which works with providers and people to ensure that services receive the investment

they need and are designed with people at their heart.

Following the roundtable, leading health and care thinktank, the Nuffield Trust, have written a long read summarising their recommendations on the steps to be taken in preparation for next winter and beyond. They argue that some level of certainty has been afforded through funding allocations for discharge over the next two years, and that this move away from sporadic emergency funding will need to continue. Discharge funding should move to a more systematic yearround approach – allocated in advance to support long-term planning.

The long read also describes how things are in a slightly better position than last year in terms of supporting people coming out of hospital, with positive examples of more collaborative working between ICSs, local authorities and care providers, even if improvements have not been felt uniformly across the country. The attendees were clear that improving discharge would require moving away from silos to develop a whole view of need, capacity and provision across the entire system – with the person and family at the centre. The long read also recommends an overarching and long-term focus on prevention, with health and care providers working together with shared trust, vision and purpose.

Speaking after the roundtable, Professor Vic Rayner, CEO of NCF said: “Every winter the nation is reminded of the immense pressure on the health and social care system and in previous years responses have been dominated by last minute, disjointed, attempts to direct resources

and funding to alleviate pressure. We want to make a difference and know that we need to coordinate our efforts to make the system work.

NCF initiated this roundtable to provide a springboard for further collaboration and discussion in the wider ICS environment and though we’re yet to find solid solutions, we have firmly established the need for social care providers to be involved in decision making by system leaders. We are delighted to be working with the Nuffield Trust and urge all system leaders, ministers and policymakers, and our health and adult social care colleagues, to embrace their recommendations. By working together and taking the steps they suggest now, we can make sure that this winter people receive the health and care they need, when they need it.”

The Nuffield Trust’s Camille Oung, the long read’s author, said: “The roundtable was a welcome opportunity to bring together leaders from across the health and social care system to discuss the improvements that are needed to help better prepare services to discharge people from hospitals next winter. “For too long, governments have dealt with hospital discharge problems through emergency funding, which has meant a continuation of problematic siloed approaches. There is an opportunity now to build a shared vision based on trust and mutual understanding of each other’s strengths to make improvements for the long term – and help ensure that people access the right care and support whenever they may need it.”

PAGE 24 | THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023

LAUNDRY SOLUTIONS Southern Contracts - Commercial Laundry & Catering Appliances SOUTHERN Contracts is one of the UK’s leading suppliers of industrial laundry, catering and commercial cleaning equipment.

We work with many local and national care and nursing homes, hotels, restaurants, holiday parks, cruise lines, offshore platforms, marine companies and local authorities, the NHS, the MoD as well as schools and colleges.

Founded in 1964 to initially supply and maintain commercial laundry equipment, we are now in our third generation and still very much a family run business. We are proud to have become a global supplier of not only laundry equipment, but with knowledge gleaned over the years, we are also a go-to company for professional kitchen appliances and commercial cleaning equipment, to our clients – many of whom are internationally acclaimed. We our knowledge of cross market products, we pride ourselves on delivering the very best solutions and service to our customers.

By stocking the leading commercial washing machines, industrial tumble dryers, cleaning equipment, HEPA vacuum and catering equipment, we can offer independent and unbiased advice to ensure your purchase

precisely meets your requirement and budget; our expert team of technical staff are on hand to ensure your business is supported through every aspect of your purchase. From initial advice on current government standards (eg. infection control for commercial washing machines and meeting government legislation for kitchen appliances) we understand the importance of keeping disruption to a minimum for our clients, whilst covering all aspects of delivery, installation, customer training, ongoing maintenance, service and repair.

We hold many accreditations for safety and service excellence, providing peace of mind to our existing and potential customers.

For more information regarding our services for : - Industrial laundry equipment - Commercial kitchen appliances and warewashing - Commercial cleaning equipment Check out our website at southerncontracts.co.uk and see previous projects we’ve worked on and our enviable testimonials received from happy clients.

Contact us now on 03301 222888 Follow us on : Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn

Forbes Receives High Profile Recognition for their Sustainable Rental Solutions Forbes Professional has recently garnered high-profile recognition for their commitment to sustainability and exceptional customer service. A national provider of sustainable rental options for commercial laundry provision, Forbes Professional has been honoured with the prestigious Best Independent Retailer - Sustainability Award at the IER (Independent Electrical Retailer) Awards.

Forbes also received high commendation for its dedication to customer service, further solidifying its position as a leader in the industry.

In an era where environmental responsibility is paramount, rental presents itself as a more sustainable procurement solution than outright purchase, supporting the circular economy and enabling multi-phase product cycles. Forbes’ consultants work with clients to help them choose energy and water efficient machines; reducing their environmental footprint whilst maintaining the highest standards of service provision and infection control. Forbes understands that the care industry often faces challenges related to laundry management, maintenance, and consumption so they present solutions that minimize resource

consumption, eliminate upfront costs and ensure a first-class service response.

Their recent high profile award serves as a testament to the company's unwavering commitment to sustainability, extending beyond its product offerings. Forbes actively promotes education and awareness; empowering organisations to make informed decisions regarding their laundry practices.

In addition to its sustainable initiatives, Forbes Professional has also been highly commended for their customer service at the IER Awards. Their customercentric approach is characterised by responsive support, prompt maintenance services, and personalised solutions tailored to the unique needs of each individual client.

After 97 years of operation, Forbes delivers exceptional industry expertise and provides ongoing support and guidance to enable a seamless and stress-free laundry process. This dedication to customer service truly sets them apart as a trusted partner in the care industry. www.forbespro.co.uk | info@forbes-professional.co.uk | 0345 070 2335

Girbau UK Launches Under Counter Washer and Dryer Models Well known for its robust commercial and industrial laundry equipment, Girbau UK has launched its first professional grade Under Counter washers and dryers that fit underneath standard 900mm height counters. Both machines combine energy efficiency, ease of use and compact size with high quality, durable construction making them ideal for a wide range of applications including care and nursing homes.

The new Under Counter washer’s strong stainless steel Active Drum™ design has hourglass lifters that guide loads to gentler central areas for better load balance and reduced wear on delicate items. A 180-degree open-

ing door makes the machine easier to load and unload from a basket. It is available with a choice of 6kg or 8kg capacity with either a pump or gravity drain.

Quiet long-life operation is assured thanks to the washer’s sturdy Quattro™ construction with durable shock absorbers that allow virtually vibration-free high-speed spinning. Rather than cheap concrete counterweights, the washer features cast iron stabilisers for higher spin speeds, better water extraction and increased spin efficiency.

The washer features an easy-to-use liquid crystal display user interface. It features 28 flexible programs, three of which are customisable, as well as disinfection, mop, microfibre and allergy settings. It also comes with in-built service diagnostics. The delayed start function can be used to plan ahead and set machines to run off-peak to optimise use of cheaper energy tariffs.

The new Under Counter dryer can also be stacked on top of the washer to save floor space. The 6kg capacity model is available in both condenser and vented versions and the 8kg capacity model is vented. The Sensi Dry system automatically determines the right drying time, saving energy and assuring fabric care. Its convenient auto programs save energy as the running time is automatically adjusted according to load size and the required dryness.

Butterfly drying ™ tumbling in a figure of eight movement, non-stop in one direction stops clothes from bundling and ensures long life durability of the motor and belt. The efficient lint filter has an automatic indicator to remind users to clean it for optimum energy efficiency and safety.

The dryer’s memory function remembers the last program used including any chosen settings, so if nothing needs to change, you can simply press start for the next load.

The new Girbau under counter washer and dryer are now available to order from Girbau UK. www.girbau.com

Preserving Identity and Preventing Loss: Cash's Apparel Solutions' Century-Long Legacy Cash's Apparel Solutions has been at the forefront of manufacturing woven nametapes for over a century, serving the nursing home sector and beyond. Their nametapes have become synonymous with preserving identity, preventing lost garments, and delivering personalised identity items and gifts.

Preserving dignity Cash's woven nametapes provide a simple yet effective solution to labelling clothing in nursing homes minimising distress caused by lost garments, fostering an environment where residents are seen and respected for who they are.

Cash's has earned a global reputation for reliability and quality. Their woven nametapes are sold and utilised worldwide, serving as a testament to their effectiveness.

In addition, Cash's Apparel Solutions goes beyond their renowned nametapes. Their expertise in weaving and personalisation allows them to create a diverse range of identity items and gifts. From personalized badges to custom keyrings and promotional products, Cash's demonstrates their versatility in

meeting unique customer needs. By offering tailored solutions, they celebrate individuality, making a significant contribution to the spirit of personalisation and fostering a sense of belonging.

A Century of Excellence: Cash's century-long presence in the industry showcases their enduring commitment to excellence. They have adapted and innovated, embracing modern technology and evolving customer demands. Cash's unwavering dedication to their craft and the nursing home sector demonstrates their genuine concern for residents' well-being and comfort.

In conclusion, Cash's has established itself as a leader in manufacturing woven nametapes, personalised identity items and gifts. With their century-long legacy of quality, reliability, and attention to detail, Cash's continues to make a significant impact in the nursing home sector and beyond. By preserving identity, preventing loss, and embracing personalisation, Cash's Apparel Solutions truly embodies their commitment to enhancing safety, dignity, and individuality in care facilities worldwide.

Visit www.cashslabels.com

THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023 | PAGE 27

DYSPHAGIA AND CATERING

allmanhall Explore Why Seasons Matter When Creating Menus For Your Residents Having an array of food available all year round may seem like a good thing.

However, this vast choice can have a negative impact on the environment, the economy and - perhaps more surprisingly - on the nutritional status of food.

In general fruits and vegetables are picked at the peak of their ripeness. This is also the peak of their nutritional status.

When out of season produce is ‘helped’ to grow in the UK, the environmental impact can be astronomical – local is not always better, especially if growing it here out of season means carbon intensive methods.

If transported to the UK from overseas, it will start to age whilst travelling. This ageing leads to fresh foods losing nutritional density and not providing the same benefits as if eaten when freshly picked: between 5 to 40% lower in vitamins and minerals*.

Why does this matter in your care homes? Smaller appetites and therefore smaller portions make it vital that food served and eaten is as nutritionally dense as possible. If

you can make your menus more in-season you are potentially increasing the nutritional density of your residents’ meals.

What’s more, in-season produce is also likely to be better quality and value!

2 TOP TIPS: 1 Know your seasons. Work with a food procurement expert, like allmanhall who fully understand the complexities of food supply and who can provide nutrition and buying advice. You can also make use of allmanhall’s seasonality guide.

2. Provide variety. Although sticking to seasons may mean you’re choosing foods from a smaller pool, do still focus on variety to deliver a greater assortment of nutrients to support the overall health of your residents. It will also help positively impact gut health through more diverse good gut bacteria.

For further information please see the advert on this page. * Researcher, University of Austin

The NACC Care Chef of the Year 2023 Finalists Announced After some particularly challenging heats the line-up of care chefs set to compete in the national final of the National Association of Care Catering (NACC) Care Chef of the Year 2023 competition has been announced.

In June, regional heats were held across the NACC Regions – Midlands, South East, Scotland, North, South West and Wales – with care chefs demonstrating that they can compete with the best when it comes to culinary skills. The prize is to represent their region in the national final scheduled to take place on 3rd October 2023 Once again, this year’s lead judge was Steve Munkley, Vice President of Craft Guild of Chefs, who attended each region to ensure continuity. The chefs had to demonstrate to the judges their full understanding of the meals they are providing for their residents whilst introducing their own flair through contemporary flavours.

The finalists who intend to impress the judges one more time include: • Nigel Cooke – Eastcote Park, Cinnamon Care Collection • Alex Millichamp – Chandler Court, Care UK • Chris Mattinson – Sycamore Court, Caterplus/Elior • Brian Preston – RBL Lister House – Royal British Legion • Jessica Vreede – Guthrie House, Four Seasons Health Care • Graham Watson – Lauder Lodge, Care UK • Kasia Hab-Bialkowska – Highmarket House Care Home, Care UK

• Chris Mitchley – St. John’s House, Castlemeadow Care • Darren Nelson – Trymview Hall Care Home, Care UK • Daniel Bree, Hartwood House, Cinnamon Care • Alex Connell, Vegetarian for Life • David Sharp, Signature for Barnet, Signature Care The ninety-minute regional heat focused on the importance of food, nutrition and positive mealtime experiences as part of quality care, entrants are challenged to create an appealing and delicious twocourse menu (main and dessert) appropriate for people in a care setting. The combined food cost for both courses should be no more than £3.50 per head based on three portions and it must be nutritionally balanced. The menu must also feature at least one product from Unilever Food Solutions’ sector-relevant catering range.

Lead Judge, Steve Munkley said: “I have been incredibly pleased with the standards I have seen so far.

This is a really important competition that shows highlights the skills within the care sector.”

Sue Cawthray, National Chair of the NACC, said: “Congratulations to the finalists of the NACC Care Chef of the Year competition 2023! The calibre of entries for this competition continues to be incredibly high, and we have seen exceptional dishes created and served by chefs across the regional heats. The finalists should be immensely proud of their efforts so far. I know that they will want to impress the judges in October.

PAGE 28 | THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023

DYSPHAGIA AND CATERING

Groundbreaking ProjectFIT IDDSI Drinks Solution: Revolutionizing Dysphagia Care in the UK Refreshment Systems Limited (RSL) introduces the ProjectFIT IDDSI drinks solution, catering to individuals living with dysphagia – a swallowing disorder affecting around 8% of the UK population. Dysphagia can significantly impact a person's quality of life, affecting nutrition, hydration, and social interactions. RSL's innovative push-button solution provides hope and convenience to patients and caregivers/clinicians alike.

Collaborating with colleagues in Belgium through Bravilor, the ProjectFIT team developed a cutting-edge counter-top machine that delivers a range of hot and cold beverages with various flavours, customized to specific IDDSI levels. By automating the preparation process, the solution ensures each drink is consistently prepared, offering patients the preferred beverage without unexpected variations.

The adherence to strict IDDSI guidelines guarantees the appropriate viscosity and texture for safe swallowing, reducing the risk of choking or aspiration. The automated process streamlines preparation, saving valuable resources, and allowing caregivers/clinicians to focus on patient care. The elimination of manual preparation results in cost and labour benefits, making it a financially viable option for healthcare providers.

An essential feature of the ProjectFIT IDDSI drinks is their amylase-resistant properties, maintaining the desired viscosity throughout consumption, ensuring a safer and more enjoyable experience for patients.

The solution offers a wide range of exciting flavours, including Orange, Apple & Peach, Lemon Tea, Coffee, and Tea, encouraging patients to stay hydrated and maintain proper nutrition. RSL and ProjectFIT plan to introduce even more flavours in the future, expanding the range of enjoyable and safe beverages for individuals with dysphagia.

With over 50 years of experience in coffee, vending and providing solutions to the UK Care Home, NHS, and Private Healthcare markets, RSL is a trusted leader in the industry. The introduction of the ProjectFIT IDDSI drinks solution reinforces their dedication to enhancing the lives of dysphagia patients and caregivers/clinicians.

The future of dysphagia catering in the UK looks brighter than ever before, thanks to the groundbreaking ProjectFIT IDDSI drinks solution from RSL. Focused on consistency, safety, and enjoyment, this innovative solution promises to improve the overall quality of life for individuals with dysphagia, marking a significant advancement in dysphagia care.

Search for RSL Vending or contact us using details below. www.refreshmentsystems.co.uk 0800 169 3686 info@refreshmentsystems.co.uk

Anglia Crown - Popular Dishes for Everyone Anglia Crown offer a wide range of hot and cold desserts that are ideal for a wellbalanced, nutritional diet, including choices that do not contain gluten. Our Crown Choice and Advantage ranges include some fifty-eight dishes, including our new, warming Ginger Chocolate Chip Sponge and delicious, comforting custard that goes with almost any hot dessert.

Our Crown Choice cold dessert includes the perennial favourites such as Chocolate Cake, whilst our Crown Advantage range also offer ‘reduced sugar’ desserts. All individual Crown Advantage desserts come in packs of eighteen, whilst the Crown Choice desserts come in packs of 3 and 6 allowing accurate portioning and cutting down on any potential waste.

Many of the Anglia Crown dishes can be teamed up with fresh fruit, allowing for additional choice. Items such as our Carrot Cake or Vanilla Cheesecake can be accompanied by whipped cream, garnished with seasonal fresh fruit.

Our hot desserts are high in energy, our hot portions of 170kcal and above provide energy and protein dense

options and when served with custard provide over 250 kcal per serving. Our cold desserts of 250 kcal and above also meet the energy guidelines in the British Dietetic Association (BDA) Nutrition and Hydration Digest (2017) requirements.

VEGAN SUITABLE CHOICES At Anglia Crown we pride ourselves with the array of vegetarian and gluten free dishes that we offer, including an impressive range of desserts. This was recognised with us being named at the Vegetarian Wholesaler of the Year 2022 at the VfL Awards for Excellence in Veg*n Care Catering.

All the Anglia Crown hot desserts are suitable for vegetarians, Most of the Anglia Crown vegan products have been registered with the Vegan Society, including some thirteen of the dessert dishes.”

Anglia Crown are here to help take the strain out of your menus throughout the year.

Visit www.angliacrown.co.uk for further details

PAGE 30 | THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023

CLEANING AND HYGIENE Omnitex Hygiene Products Angloplas Dispensers Help Reduce Omnitex represents all round protection and hygiene products. Launched in 2015 it has quickly become a brand synonymous with high quality, used everyday by thousands of individuals and healthcare facilities throughout the UK and Europe. All products are manufactured in ISO9001 and ISO13485 certified facilities.

Omnitex Body Cleansing wipes are a large size, which the ideal thickness for a comfortable cleaning experience. Bulk pack of 80 wipes, with our unique enriching formula and microwaveable.

• Microwaveable for a warm bed bath.

• Lightly fragranced and with a honeycomb texture on Wipes, facilitating better cleaning coverage, absorbency and hygiene • If following the 8-wipe bed bath protocol, each pack will allow for 10 cleanses. Cost saving Pack of 80 wipes.

• One wipe for each area of the body : Face, Neck, Chest, Arms, Perineum, Legs, Back & Buttocks.

• Dermatologically Tested.

the Risk of Cross Infection

• Latex Free, Alcohol Free, Parabens Free.

• No water required Omnitex is a Brand representing British Quality in PPE and Incontinence Products A wide range of PPE Medical Grade Masks, Shoe Covers, Disposable Aprons, Mob caps & Gloves.

Omnitex also includes a premium range of Incontinence Bed Pads and Mobility Consumables.

Contact 0141 778 6017, sales@omnitex-uk.com or visit www.omnitex-uk.com

Angloplas are a UK manufacturer who specialise in producing dispensers for the health and hygiene industry. Although these are designed to keep the workplace tidy and uncluttered they are, more importantly, built knowing the control of healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs) are a priority for healthcare providers, and who are employing a combination of infection prevention and control strategies, including hand hygiene, cleaning, training and the adoption of new technologies, to tackle the problem.

As a result, a wide range of infection control products and technologies are emerging on the market, including antimicrobial technology.

Angloplas’ range of dispensers are produced in the

world’s first proven Antimicrobial PVC with silver ion technology and which is exclusive to Angloplas.

This helps reduce the risk of cross infection by stopping the growth of bacteria and mould and works continuously for the lifetime of the product, reducing levels of bacteria such as MRSA, E Coli, Legionella, Salmonella and mould by up to

99.99%.

For non-clinical environments Angloplas has recently launched its new Budget Range of products which are made to the same exacting standards as the antimicrobial protected ones but with lower price tags.

You can order Angloplas products directly from its website by going to www.angloplas.co.uk

Swiftclean Support for Care Homes Running a care home presents plenty of challenges, some of which it is wise to outsource to an experienced and reputable specialist.

Swiftclean is a family owned nationwide business. We specialise in air and water hygiene compliance with a particular emphasis on ventilation duct cleaning, kitchen extract fire safety cleaning, fire damper drop testing, laundry extract cleaning and commercial building water systems.

Swiftclean has been and continues to be invaluable to general managers and facilities managers of care homes and can provide a package of services giving you peace of mind and value for money.

Our specialist teams work in accordance with BSEN15780 and TR19® for ventilation cleaning; L8 and HTM-04-01 for water management; TR19® Grease for kitchen extract fire safety cleaning; and BS 9999 for fire dampers;

these are the industry standards which are recognised as key in each specialist area.

With all our services, excellent work is only half the story. In the event of an inspection, you will need to be able to demonstrate that your care home is compliant; it won’t be enough for you to know that it is. We provide all the required documentation, including before and after photographs and post clean and maintenance reports so you can be sure that your service users are safe and you are protected from any liability for negligence.

Contact us now to book in your free care home assessment on 0800 243 471 or email info@swiftclean.co.uk www.swiftclean.co.uk

PAGE 32 | THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023

CLEANING AND HYGIENE Wipertec - Hygenic Wipes for Care With over 25 years experience of manufacturing both dry wipes and wet wipes to ISO9001 standards, Wipertec offer both our own established brands and customer own private label.

At Wipertic we recognise that if there’s one thing that is vital in care home environments, it’s cleanliness!

Elderly residents become more prone to infection and illness, and are not as resilient as they once were, which is why they are more disposed to the spread of infections.

Furthermore, a clean hygienic care home is not only vital for resident safety, but also important in terms of aesthetic appeal, a clean environment helps to foster a positive caring environment where residents feels safe and their loved ones assured.

With respect to residents’ personal hygiene, one of the most crucial responsibilities that care home staff perform is ensuring and maintaining the personal cleanliness of residents.

Correct cleaning minimises the danger of illness and infection, enhances the resident’s overall health and wellbeing, helping to keep them happier by increasing their sense of pride and dignity. When bathing patients, wipes are among the most regularly used items for incontinence care or general cleansing, assisting in the safe and complete cleaning of residents in a comfortable manner.

We at Wipertec can provide an extensive range of formats such as single sachet individual wipes, packs, canisters and buckets.

Our products can be seen globally across a wide variety of sectors such as healthcare, industrial, retail, education and many more.

With the efficient service we provide, we like to think of ourselves as another valued member of your own team!

We would love to hear from you!

For any further information you require, and to see our comprehensive range please visit us at www.wipertecltd.co.uk

edencleen from Cleenol

Over the course of our history, we at Cleenol have always produced products that offer a perfect balance between cleaning performance and efficiency with an attention to reducing the environmental impact that our products may carry. edencleen, our latest brand, reaffirms our commitment to our credentials for environmental guardianship, and represents an evolution of what has been an integral part of our DNA. Edencleen has been designed to reflect in part our vision for a cleaner, safer world, that touches not only the environmental aspects of sustainability, but has as an aim, a social ambition to leave the planet in the safe care of and for future generations. As such with edencleen, Cleenol looks to ensure transparency in our approach, which may on occasion result in some counter intuitive elements.

The range covers the essential needs to cover 80% of daily cleaning and include: a washroom cleaner and toilet gel cleaner and urinal deodoriser, an all-purpose surface sanitiser, a degreaser and a washing up liquid, a no rinse floor degreaser, a window cleaner and a laundry detergent and fabric softener. edencleen products have been developed around the following principles and ingredients • RSPO certified palm oil derivatives • No animal derived products • Cruelty free

• Minimal petrochemical derived products • No parabens, formaldehyde, CMI/MIT, triclosan, phosphates, chlorine bleaches, optical brighteners, quaternary ammonium compounds • VOC free and phosphate, EDTA, NTA free • Recyclable / recycled packaging • 100% bio-based surfactant - made by using bio-based ethylene oxide which is manufactured from biomass ethanol.

• Bioethanol, naturally derived acids, sugar-based surfactants, bio-based solvents, low impact preservatives Combining carefully formulated products, with appropriate packaging, using recycled material or recyclable componentry, the range’s mostly colourless liquid and low fragrance usage are designed to convey a transparency and straightforwardness of our approach which will be a hallmark of all edencleen products and associated services.

Careful use of enzymatic formulations and more traditional chemistry brings a portfolio of products that’s finely attuned to delivering effective cleaning which when used as instructed helps maintain a neutral environmental impact. edencleen’s new range represents just the start to a fully refreshed solution to meet the most demanding of customers expectations.

See the advert below for further information.

With over 25 years experience of manufacturing both dry wipes and wet wipes to ISO9001 standards.

Mylux Dry Wipes

ECO

ECO EXTRA

SILKSOFT

MACERATABLE

BIOCOMP

• Economy polypropylene wipes range

• Heavier weight Polypropylene range

• Luxury wipes range, ideal for use on sensitive skin

• Designed for use in macerator systems

• Biodegradable & Compostable dry wipe

• Soft and strong

• Stronger and Thicker

• Absorbent with a superior silky soft feel

• Ultra absorbent, strong both wet and dry

• Very absorbent

• Lightweight thermal bond fabric material • Perfect everyday Use

• Mediumweight thermal bond fabric material • General Cleaning

Mylux Skin Wet Wipes

ECOSKIN

• Economy polypropylene wet wipes range

• Lightweight thermal bond fabric material • Soft and strong

• Perfect for everyday use

BIOSKIN

• Biodegradable wet wipes range • Plastic free and eco friendly • Very strong

SOFTSKIN

• Luxury wet wipes range, ideal for use on sensitive skin types • Ultra soft polyester/ viscose spunlace fabric material

• 4 different formats

MACSKIN

• Designed for use in macerator systems

• Made from cellulose based airlaid paper

• Polyester/ viscose spunlace fabric material

• Made from cellulose based airlaid paper

We can provide an extensive range of formats such as single sachet individual wipes, packs, canisters and buckets.

We offer both our own established brands and customer own private label.

Our products can be seen globally across a wide variety of sectors such as healthcare, industrial, retail, education and many more.

The efficient service we provide we like to think of ourselves as another valued member of your own team.

• Plastic free and Eco Friendly

MULTIPURPOSE

• Colour Coded Cleaning wipes for infection control

• 50% Viscose, much higher absorbency than industry standard fabric

Mylux Surface Wet Wipes

AQUASURF

• Water based disinfection wipes • Antibacterial & Antiviral (plus Coronavirus) • Strong polypropelene fabric

• Ocean fresh fragrance

BIOSURF

• Biodegradable wet wipes range • Plastic free and eco friendly

• Lemon Fragrance

DETCARE

• Detergent cleaning wipes • Perfect for general surface cleaning

• Strong polypropelene fabric

• Ocean fresh fragrance

SCRUB & CLEAN • Technical abrasive fabric • Antibacterial & Antiviral (plus Coronavirus) • Degreasing formulation • Lemon Fragrance

BUY ONLINE AT www.wipertecltd.co.uk Units 3-8 Bury South Business Park, Radcliffe, M26 2AD

0161 7637464 sales@wipertecltd.co.uk

PAGE 34 | THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023

PRODUCTS AND SERVICES New Lines Added To Our Favourite Chamonix Designs furniture pieces. In an extensive palette, ranging from staple neutrals to fashion-led brights, colours can be selected and combined to fit with any chosen project scheme.

Orelle, Marmotte and Slalom are provided with Crib 5 Flame Retardant backing, soil and stain resist finish and a waterproof layer and meet the requirements for severe contract situations, with 50,000 Martindale rubs, offering a beautiful choice for any contract interior.

The collection meets the requirements for Flame Retardancy standards across the UK and Europe, and meets IMO standards with the added benefit of the MED wheelmark, for marine/cruise-line interiors. Available immediately, with short lead-times for larger order quantities, Skopos are pleased to add this collection into their Accents range. For a copy of our Chamonix Deuxiè me shade-card pls contact our customer service team: sales@skopos.co.uk, or for free samples of Chamonix Deuxiè me or any of our collections, visit our website: www.skoposfabrics.com or see page 5 for details.

Skopos has more than 50 years’ specialist experience in the design and manufacture of high-performance FR contract fabrics for the care sector.

As a key part of many care-home schemes, our Chamonix upholstery fabrics provide a durable and stylish solution to contract furniture in demanding environments. For 2023 we are launching our follow-on collection: Chamonix Deuxiè me brings a new colour story to contract upholstery. A fresh influx of these three well-loved upholstery fabric designs, Chamonix Deuxiè me provides even greater choice. With 38 new Skus, each design works beautifully alone or in combination, to create simple, contemporary and stylish contract

C&S Seating Ltd C&S Seating Ltd have provided postural control equipment to residential homes, hospices, medical equipment services and NHS trust hospitals nationwide since 1991.

With 9 different sizes of T-Rolls and Log Rolls, in a removable and machine washable Waterproof Titex or Soft Knit material. These rolls are used to control posture and position of the body in either supine or side lying. Our Knee & Leg support wedges are available in 2 sizes.

C&S Seating Ltd is the sole manufacturer of the Alternative Positioning Support – also available in two sizes, which has removable side cushions and

middle pommel for when more control of the abducted lower limb is required.

Our popular and vibrant range of Soft Knit covers in a choice of 5 colours, provide a softer alternative, ideal for the colder seasons and are designed to fit snug over our waterproof rolls for maximum protection and comfort.

Contact us on 01424 853331 or visit www.candsseating.co.uk to request or download a brochure, pricelist or order form, request an individualised quotation, speak to an advisor or to place an order. See the advert on page 5..

MOWOOT II is a groundbreaking non-invasive and non-pharmacological solution to chronic constipation.

Developed by a team of doctors and other healthcare professionals, the MOWOOT II performs gentle abdominal massage that speeds up intestinal transit in people suffering with chronic constipation.

Clinically proven, safe and effective, easy to use, relaxing and side-effects free, the MOWOOT II Abdominal Massage Therapy System combats constipation, allowing the sufferers to enjoy the freedom of a healthy life.

Easy to use and comfortable, MOWOOT II treats and manages chronic constipation in people with spinal cord injuries, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s Disease patients and when constipation is caused by drugs and pharmacological interventions. MOWOOT II also helps people combat idiopathic chronic constipation, such as

suffered by menopausal and post-menopausal women and the older and elderly people.

In clinical studies, MOWOOT II was found to increase evacuation frequency, soften stools, improve regularity, reduce gasses and bloating and relieve abdominal discomfort.

Just 10 to 20 minutes per day of relaxing abdominal massage therapy with MOWOOT II produces noticeable improvements. Significant results are experienced few days after the first treatment. Regular applications ensure lasting improvements and better quality of life.

MOWOOT II – the effective solution to chronic constipation and the way to a healthier life!

For more information, contact Win Health Medical Ltd - 01835 864866 - www.win-health.com See the advert on page 3 for further details.

BIOFROST Cold Therapy Gels for Drug-Free Pain Relief ®

BIOFROST® Cold Therapy Gels are natural drug-free topical cold therapy gels for muscular and joint pain, chronic arthritic pain, postactivity muscle tension, general aches and overuse disorders. Easy to use and fast acting, BIOFROST® Cold Therapy Gels relieve pain, reduce inflammation and swelling without drugs and drug-related side-effects.

BIOFROST® Gels:

• BIOFROST® Relief Cold Gel for pain relieving cold therapy • BIOFROST® Active Dual-Action Cold Gel with Heat Sensation combining cold with natural heat effects

to treat back pain BIOFROST® Relief provides instant pain relief and activates body’s own healing through an optimal combination of natural ingredients, including ethanol, menthol, eucalyptus, peppermint and MSM. Reported benefits of BIOFROST® Relief include lasting pain relief, improved joint movements, comfort during sleep, fewer cramps, calmed nerve pain, reduced joint and muscle discomfort and faster post-activity recoveries.

T: 01835 864864866 / E: info@win-health.com / W: www.win-health.com See the advert on page 3 and the front cover.

Yeoman Shield Fire Door Services Taking the Guess Work out of Fire Doors MOWOOT II for Life Free from Constipation Fire Doors are an imperative part of fire safety and are considerations of the design and maintenance of any building, but especially residential. Article 17 – RRFSO states fire safety provisions (includes fire doors) must be maintained in a suitable condition and working order.

If you are the Responsible Person, it’s imperative you appoint a competent person to assist in meeting your duties under the fire safety order to ensure fire safety measures including fire doors are kept in working order.

Yeoman Shield’s Fire Door Services can help to take the guess work out of fire door maintenance by providing fire door inspections, condition reports, remedial work and fire door installation all carried out

by FDIS and/or FIRAS accredited team members Having a good maintenance routine will dispel some needs of fire door replacement therefore being more cost effective.

The implementation of Yeoman Shield Fire Rated Door Protection products can also be in the long term financially beneficial by halting impact damage from the start eliminating many repairs in the future and again will extend door lifecycles.

Installing Yeoman Shield door protection products such as, door protection panels, door edge protectors and PVCu glazing bead units will not affect the integrity of the fire door as all products have been tested, in situ, to the current standard required.

Vulnerable frames and architraves can also be protected from impact with Yeoman Shield to prevent dangerous splintering and splitting as well as abolishing the time-consuming, repetitive need for repainting.

For a complete repair and protect service contact the team today frdp@yeomanshield.com or visit www.yeomanshield.com or see the advert page 10.

B-Sure Recycling Launches Waste Management Company THE COMPLETE RECYCLING SOLUTION FOR ALL YOUR BUSINESS WASTE

B-Sure Installations, a leading UK installation company for the care home and healthcare sector in the UK. The Leicestershire-based company has recently invested over £70k to launch a new waste management company, B-Sure Recycling. The new enterprise, helps customers, many of which include residential care homes, reach mounting waste management targets by providing a complete collection and recycling service of all types of business waste.

“How we manage waste is a huge environmental and business concern for the healthcare sector. Reaching recycling targets through circular economy solutions are a significant part of environmental goals for the care industry,” explains Ross Chambers, Managing Director, B-Sure Installations.

THE COMPLETE WASTE MANAGEMENT PROCESS

All types of waste items including paper towels, furniture and electrical equipment can be recycled at the B-Sure recycling site where the company has installed two compactors and a high-tech granulator.

B-Sure Recycling provides the complete management of the waste recycling process. Care homes and hospitals are provided with bins and cages to collect waste at their sites. When these are full customers can either book a collection using an on line portal or arrange for a regular collection to be made by the B-Sure recycling team.

Once collected then the waste transported back to B-Sure Recycling facilities. Metal waste is collated, wood-based waste is broken down and separated and plastic waste is granulated and bagged. The recycled materials are then provided to B-Sure partners who create it into new products such as mats, play areas, PVC windows, toys and many more new products. Some items such as office furniture, if they are in good condition, are refurbished or resized so that they can be reused, placing them back into the circular economy.

THE COMPLETE CIRCULAR ECONOMY RECYCLING SOLUTION

B-Sure experts can provide an outline of the recycling process end to end, and businesses who want to book the recycling service can do so via an online system.

The B-Sure team take care of the whole process enabling customers to focus on their own important business, whilst ensuring that their waste management targets are being met and their operations are working sustainably.

“We can now offer a complete circular economy recycling solution for all of our customers to reach their waste management targets ,” adds Ross Chambers. “BSure Recycling can enable its health care and care home customers to complete its waste circle, saving them money, time and inconvenience within the manufacturing process whilst supporting the much needed expansion of the business waste recycling infrastructure across the country.”

WELFARE IS A PRIORITY

Family-owned B-Sure has grown over the last 15 years to be a major installation company in the UK. B-Sure specialises in maintenance and installation projects and property maintenance across all types of businesses from care homes to offices, hospitals to shopping centres. All B-Sure staff are trained to work with care and respect to specific customer needs.

“The welfare and well-being of everyone at a customer’s site s is paramount for every project. Our teams are trained not just in the practical skills, but also how to show care and consideration towards people – and this approach is extended to B-Sure recycling service. We provide all the tools, equipment and advice of how to make the most of the new service for the benefit of the business and the environment with minimal disruption and mess. ” https://bsureinstallations.com/

THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023 | PAGE 35

ENHANCING RESIDENT WELL-BEING:

THE POWER OF INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT and intuitive touchscreens, these tables offer an inclusive and accessible platform for individuals of all abilities to engage in various activities.

2. MENTAL HEALTH AND SENSORY STIMULATION:

Engaging residents in interactive entertainment not only stimulates their minds but also contributes significantly to their mental health and emotional well-being. Interactive tables provide opportunities for sensory stimulation, as residents can explore vibrant visual displays, listen to soothing music, and interact with tactile elements. Such immersive experiences have been shown to alleviate stress, reduce feelings of isolation, and improve overall mood.

3. IMPROVING COGNITIVE SKILLS: Interactive entertainment

In today's fast-paced world, the role of technology in improving the quality of life for individuals of all ages cannot be underestimated. This is especially true in the context of adult social care, where the integration of interactive entertainment has proven to be a game-changer for resident well-being, mental health, and sensory stimulation. Care and nursing homes across the UK have recognized the immense benefits of incorporating interactive tables into their facilities, revolutionizing the way residents engage with technology, foster cognitive skills, promote exercise, and create an atmosphere of fun, laughter, and enjoyment for both staff and residents.

1. TECHNOLOGY AS A GATEWAY TO RESIDENT WELLBEING: Gone are the days when technology was seen as a barrier to

socialization and human connection. Interactive tables have emerged as a powerful tool in bridging the digital divide and enhancing the overall well-being of care home residents. With easy-to-use interfaces

offers an exciting and interactive way to boost residents' cognitive skills. Games and applications specifically designed for older adults help enhance memory, problem-solving abilities, and critical thinking.

From brain teasers to puzzles, residents can engage in intellectually stimulating activities that keep their minds sharp and active. The versatility of interactive tables allows for the easy customization and introduction of new applications as residents' needs evolve.

4. PROMOTING EXERCISE AND PHYSICAL WELL-BEING:

Physical activity is an essential aspect of maintaining a healthy lifestyle, regardless of age. Interactive tables can play a vital role in encouraging residents to engage in light exercises and movements. Through games that involve physical gestures or virtual fitness classes, residents can enjoy a fun and interactive way to stay active and improve their physical well-being.

5. COMMUNICATION AND SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT:

Loneliness and social isolation are significant challenges faced by many care home residents. Interactive tables can help combat these issues by providing a platform for communication and social engagement. Whether through video calls with loved ones, interactive multi-

Safe & Sound Music & Movement+ The ‘Safe & Sound Music & Movement+’ chair-based exercise programme is winning awards as it helps maturing adults to become and stay physically and mentally fitter, healthier & cognisant.

The programme has been in development for over twelve years and in 2019 & 2021 they were awarded ‘Best Holistic Health & Fitness Provider’ for Southern England in the Healthcare and Pharmaceutical awards.

Utilising sitting, standing & transitional movements, the classes are

open to everyone regardless of their present abilities, with adaptions to cater for all, helping everyone to improve over time, covering the whole of the body from head to toe.

The plus in the title refers to all the other elements not normally covered in your run of the mill exercise class, with interventions covering arthritis, heart problems, Parkinson’s, balance, fall prevention, mobility, flexibility, strength, diabetes and dementia as well as general mental & physical health & wellbeing.

player games, or group activities, residents can connect with others, foster meaningful relationships, and form a sense of belonging within the care home community.

6. VERSATILITY AND FUN FOR ALL: One of the greatest advantages of interactive tables is their versatility. They can be customized to suit the diverse interests and preferences of residents. From interactive music sessions and sing-alongs to trivia nights and art workshops, the possibilities are endless. The element of fun, laughter, and enjoyment is not limited to residents alone; staff members also benefit from witnessing the positive impact of interactive entertainment on residents' lives, creating a more fulfilling and rewarding work environment.

As the adult social care landscape continues to evolve, integrating interactive entertainment into care and nursing homes is a forwardthinking approach that prioritizes resident well-being, mental health, sensory stimulation, cognitive skills, and physical exercise. Interactive tables have proven to be invaluable tools, providing a versatile platform for a wide range of activities, fostering social connections, and enriching the lives of both residents and staff members alike. By embracing these advancements, care homes can create a vibrant and inclusive environment where joy, engagement, and fulfillment thrive.

Frank Markham, founder said “We are leading the way, enabling people to become and stay physically & mentally fit, active and independent for longer.

Although based in Dorset we are also developing an online training course to enable activity co-ordinators to provide the programme to their own care home’s nationally.

For further information call 07960 990771 or visit www.holisticbodytraining.co.uk

PAGE 36 | THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023

INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT

TV That Creates Connection And Conversation - Is Your Care Setting Using My Life TV? My Life TV offers a unique solution for care homes and care providers, supporting staff to deliver high quality, person-centred care. The on demand wellbeing and care tool, available on any internet connected device, is specifically designed for people living with dementia and those who care for them. It contains over 170 hours of content, created and curated to meet the cognitive needs of people living with dementia.

There is a rich mix of content, from stimulating activities for individuals or groups, including sing-a-longs, quizzes, chair yoga and art classes, through to relevant reminiscence programmes and joyful entertainment, all accessible at any time of day and night. From Bryce Forsyth’s Generation Game to Gardener’s World, Blue Peter and Delia, there are favourites taken from the nation’s archives. There’s an abundance of content to help continue people’s personal interests and hobbies - and to spark new ones - from nature, wildlife and animals, to painting and poetry, ballroom dancing to birdwatching, cookery to crafts, cars and cross stitch, through to travel, sports and music. Subscribers can find something that is perfect for the moment, the mood and the situation.

The platform supports and enables reminiscence - so important for the elderly and for individuals living

with dementia - taking people back, to recollect fond memories and times gone by. There is a wealth of content, from Reminiscence with Jan, to historic programmes, like A Year to Remember, taking in key moments including the Queen’s coronation and England winning the world cup, as well as other stimulus to provoke memories and create conversation. Your staff may not remember or understand how life was in the past, but users often comment that My Life TV enables staff to get to know their residents better, as well as helping families to enjoy time with their loved ones, creating new memories and inspiring conversations.

My Life TV works with trusted, expert partners, including Alzheimer’s Society, BBC Archive, National Trust, BFI and NAPA (National Activity Providers Association), as well as engaging with subscribers and users, to ensure the platform adds real value, is dementia-centred and grounded in supporting best practice care. It is one of the reasons My Life TV has been cited as supporting outstanding care delivery by CQC (Care Quality Commission).

Find out more about My Life TV at www.mylifefilms.org

‘Happiness is Our Forte’ – Musical Moments’ Musical Moments sessions are fun, energetic, and fully accessible, involving lots of sensory props, movement, and singing – all, of course, to great music. Director Maggie says “Music brings such joy and a sense of togetherness for people – something that we all really need.”

Every member of the Musical Moments team is passionate about the therapeutic benefits of music for groups and individuals with physical and mental disabilities, people with dementia and other conditions, as well as with care home residents. The sessions are carefully designed to be fully interactive and inclusive so as to stimulate and include everyone in the room, all while developing cognitive skills, gross and fine motor skills and increasing social interactions.

It’s not just participants who benefit from these activities – they’re also appreciated by carers, staff and family members. The pandemic has reignited public appreciation for those who’ve looked after vulnerable members of society, and the Musical Moments team are passion-

ate about providing some light relief for caring staff, families and friends. Family members can spend time with a relative in these sessions without the pressure of conversation – instead, they can simply enjoy the activities together.

Musical Moments work with consultants including an adaptive movement specialist and a Music Therapist who endorse their sessions and ensure they provide the greatest physical and mental health benefits for their participants. All team members have full insurance, safeguarding training, and DBS checks.

Above all, the Musical Moments team cares about bringing joy to the lives of others through music – something that really strikes a chord in a post-pandemic world.

Currently operating in: North Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Cheshire, Shropshire, Essex, Leeds, Liverpool and Solent areas.

For more information, to book a session or even join the team please see our website www.musical-moments.co.uk or email: hello@musical-moments.co.uk See the advert on page 33.

THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023 | PAGE 37

INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT

Magic Table The Magic Table® from Little Islands® takes the market leading Tiny Tablet, and then launches it to a completely new level by building in a high quality sound system that allows everyone to join in the FUN! • Sensory Stimulation • Reminiscence • Hand Eye Coordination • Brain Training • Relaxation • Entertainment

• Communication • Story Telling • Socialising • Chair Exercises • Music Therapy • WiFi Internet • Google Play Store Why not give us a call today to arrange your own personal live on-line demonstration.

Call 01282 869802 or email hello@littleislands.org See the advert on the front cover for further details.

Immersive Music Experiences for Care Homes Music can be an incredible tool for enhancing the quality of life and for evoking memories in people living with dementia and sensory impairments. At Silent Memories we provide wireless headset packages for care homes, providing a completely unique sensory audio experience for residents.

WHY USE HEADSETS?

Create a fully immersive experience through the power of headsets, helping develop a deeper sense of coherence, communication, and stimulation. The headsets contain 3 channels meaning 3 different types of music can be set up at the same time to cater for a range of musical tastes. Think meandering along to Mozart on channel 1, swinging to Vera Lynn on channel 2 or rocking out to Elvis Presley on channel 3!

By playing familiar tracks through headsets, memories and feelings can be stimulated. Music can be carefully chosen by loved ones and care workers to really enhance the experience for residents.

KEEP ON MOVING!

Care homes using Silent Memories have noted a distinct increase in engagement, animation, and stimulation amongst residents. Using headsets allows them to opt in or out of the sessions. The sessions can be taking place in a communal area and anyone not taking part won’t be distracted by the activity.

With a long transmission range, it also allows patients with limited mobility to take part in their own rooms.

WHAT THE CARE HOMES SAY...

"I have been astounded by the positive affects holding a ‘Silent Disco’ has had on my clients. Silent Memories have played within our care home setting and we have been surprised at the way in which the impact of intimate, personal music, especially tailored to clients, has engaged the most static, distant clients and really ‘brought them back to life’, and brought obvious pleasure and joy to many others.

Briony Sloan - Homecroft, Bradford

Please contact the team at Silent Noize to find out how we can help improve the quality of living for your residents. info@silentnoizeevents.com, call 0203 727 5382 or visit www.silentnoizeevents.com

PLEASE MENTION THE CARER WHEN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISING

PAGE 38 | THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023

NURSE CALL AND FALLS MANAGEMENT

A Technology Enabled Response to Elderly Falls in the Community Falls among the elderly are increasingly common and are a large driver of urgent and at times emergency community response.

They are also a major cause of a decrease in quality of life, loss of independence and when left without response for over an hour, associated with hospital admission and long-term moves into care as a result.

Every year, at least one fall will be experienced by: • 1 in 3 adults over 65 • Half of people over 80 Recent government modelling predicts that changes to activity levels will result in an increase to these numbers with: • 110,000 more elderly adult fallers.

• An additional cost of £211 million to the NHS as a result.

However, not all falls result in serious injury and can be responded to by community-based falls services.

ALLEVIATING AMBULANCE SERVICES: Ambulance services are usually called to respond to people who have fallen in the community. Some ambulance services have recognised the need to reduce callouts for uninjured falls and have delivered training sessions and issued equipment for social care providers to support elderly fallers in the community.

Programs from North East Ambulance Service & the Welsh Ambulance Service Trusts have seen results including: • 87% increase in in-house falls response • Lifting equipment used in 56% of cases.

• A 32% reduction in calls to 999 from 115 care homes

THE RAIZER LIFTING CHAIR: A SOLUTION TO NON-INJURIOUS COMMUNITY FALLS: The Raizer is a portable, electric lifting chair that allows a carer to provide rapid response for a non-injurious fall. An intuitive design means the Raizer can be set up in under a minute and requires no staff training to use.

A single carer can complete a remote-controlled mechanical patient lift in just 30 seconds once the chair is assembled.

A Raizer lifting chair can help to: • Free up carers’ time: The process can take as little as 5 minutes from set up to lifting.

• Reduce long-lie times: Carers can respond to non-injurious falls quickly.

• Alleviate ambulance stress: Reduce the number of ambulances calls for non-injurious falls.

REDUCING LONG LIE TIMES | THE LONG-TERM PLAN FOR COMMUNITY FALLS: The NHS Long-Term Plan aims to shift demand from acute hospital care into social care by offering ‘joined up health and care services’ where appropriate.

In practice, this means an increase of community-based falls response teams as well as social care providers and emergency services working together to provide faster falls response to uninjured fallers.

These teams respond to non-injurious falls that do not require ambulances and crucially, reduce the number of long-lies on the ground for over an hour. This is particularly important for the oldest residents, a recent study showed: • 59% of all over 90s have been found on the floor at some stage.

• 88% of those who fell were unable to get up.

• 33% of over 90s spent over one hour on the ground before receiving assistance.

MOVING FORWARD: Social care providers must explore innovative solutions that will allow ambulances to redirect their focus to the most urgent emergencies.

Government services should focus on community-based falls response to alleviate system pressures by establishing a ‘home-first approach to care’ that sees the healthcare support offered in a person’s place of residence.

Appropriate tech-enabled falls response equipment such as the Raizer Lifting Chair and falls responder training can address the over reliance on emergency services to respond to non-injurious community falls and contribute to a more efficient and effective emergency response system.

For more information on the Raizer Lifting Chair: ww.vivid.care Phone: 01423 799 960 Email: enquiries@vivid.care

www.nursecallsystems.co.uk

THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023 | PAGE 39

NURSE CALL AND FALLS MANAGEMENT Medpage Falls Management Products Medpage Limited has been at the forefront in patient care product innovation for almost four decades. During this time, we have invented alarm clocks to wake deaf people, monitors for people with epilepsy to detect night-time seizures and alerting carers by radio pager, Calendar Clocks with memory prompting for people with dementia, bed and chair leaving alarms with pager warnings for a carer, and a vast array of electronic sensors.

Our philosophy is always to produce products that people can afford, not just dream of. Certainly, the way world has been for the past few years that philosophy makes more sense today. Our latest range of bed and chair sensor alarms for example, cost a fraction more than they did 10 years ago. Mainly due to the good old microprocessor replacing a bucket load of analogue components.

Does anyone remember op-amps and transistors?

There are close to 100 Medpage branded products to aid care of people who may be; a falls risk, live with epilepsy, suffer from stroke, are a full-time carer, professional healthcare worker, living with dementia. Our products are designed, manufactured, and distributed governed by an audited quality management system. You can trust us to delivery on every count.

People generally these days are not so concerned with the past, mainly what can we have today and what could we have tomorrow. Simple answer. Today you could visit our website and explore the vast array of Independent Living Aids, Hospital Discharge Patient Home Support product packages, Domestic and Professional Carer Support products.

Better planning today will bring better outcomes for tomorrow. Take a look at www.easylinkuk.co.uk

Frequency Precision - Sensors and Pressure Mats to Monitor Those in Care Technology has made people more connected with the world around them and the revolution in assistive care devices has made it possible for the elderly to spend their last years in a comfortable and familiar environment. These devices have also made it easier for home carers to provide quality care for their loved ones while managing their own lives. They allow you to care for your elderly whether they are travelling in the city for errands, staying alone at home, or staying in the same home as you. They are also helping nursing homes provide better care for them with discrete monitoring and quick responses to emergencies.

If you’re looking for these kinds of assistive care devices for your loved ones or nursing home, Frequency Precision produce some of the best systems available to help you with elderly care and mobility monitoring, ranging from bed, chair and floor

sensor mats through fall monitoring and GPS tracking to fully integrated nurse call plug or wireless systems.

Contact us or come and see us at the COTS on Stand 36 Phone: 01837 810590 Email: contact@frequencyprecision.com Website: www.frequencyprecision.com

Silent Running - Tranquility in Care Homes Quiet and calm care homes ensure that residents are able to live in a more relaxing and pleasant home environment. Similarly, carers and staff find that they too benefit from reduced stress when working in a home where noise levels are kept to a minimum. There are many environmental factors that can affect those sensitive to their surroundings, particularly those suffering from dementia, these can be fluctuations in ambient temperature, light, and of course noise.

Repetitive and high levels of noise can originate from a number of internal and external sources, for example, telephones ringing, loud conversations in corridors, and call bells sounding, often one of the largest contributors to increasing the levels of stress and discomfort in residents.

A published study by the University of Stirling stated that unanswered Nurse Call (Call Bell) alarms can be one of the most common causes of stress in dementia sufferers. The University recommends “fitting call

alarms which alert nurses but do not resonate throughout the whole building. Alarms can be particularly disconcerting as they may encourage the person with dementia to respond or investigate what the matter is. At the very least the loss of sleep will compromise a person’s ability to concentrate. It can affect their attention levels and capacity to cope, as well as being detrimental to their overall state of wellbeing. Personal paging systems are preferable to bells and buzzers.” Modern Nurse Call systems can incorporate a number of methods to reduce their impact in a care home. These include zoning whereby there are separate alarm types used depending upon the location of the call. In these circumstances, dementia sufferers and those vulnerable to noise can be located in one “zone” whist less vulnerable residents live in an alternative “zone”. Each “zone” can operate different call tones, warning lights or other methods to alert when help is required Reducing noise levels is essential to create a tranquil environment for

residents. Pagers have been around for many years, are a relatively simple and cost-effective measure in reducing the levels of noise, and can be added to most Nurse Call systems. Smart Mobile Devices are now becoming more commonplace for care home staff and hold a variety of apps for care planning, e-medication, etc. Many Courtney Thorne clients are now utilising the “Go” app with their Nurse Call system. With the “Go” app, nurse call alarms are delivered immediately and silently straight to the handsets, alerting the individual carers to all Nurse call alarms without creating any general alarm sound and rarely disturbing the rest of the residents in the home.

Calmer residents ultimately means that staff are less stressed also, this creates a happier workplace where morale is greatly improved, staff are retained and CQC ratings improve. Clearly, the positive ramifications of a quiet Care Home run deep. Get in touch today to find out how we can help your home become a quieter, calmer, and more tranquil environment.

For more information email us at: info@c-t.co.uk or see the facing page.

PAGE 40 | THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023

NURSE CALL AND FALLS MANAGEMENT

Fall Savers - Affordable Fall Monitoring Solutions Nurse Alert Mats Designed to combat the problem of residents who are inclined to walk undetected, the Nurse Alert Mat can help protect residents especially at night that are at risk of falls and accidents.

When connected to a Nurse Call system or the mobile Floor Sentry Monitor it will then alert staff, sounding the alarm with a small amount of pressure thus enabling staff to investigate.

• Nurse Call Systems • Fire Alarm Systems • Door Access • Staff Attack • CCTV • Infection Control • Dementia Care • Electrical Contracting

In addition The Floor Pressure Mat has a heavy non slip backing, It comes professionally sealed so can easily be cleaned for liquid spills and is fully serviceable.

INCLUDES A 12 MONTH GUARANTEE

sales@lctuk.com 0800 8499 121 www.LCTUK.com

PLEASE MENTION THE CARER WHEN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISING

Fall Savers®, are an experienced market leading healthcare provider of resident safety solutions for over 15 years.

FALL SAVERS ® WIRELESS MONITOR Eliminate all cables with our new generation falls management solutions!

Upgrade your falls programme with the latest technology from Fall Savers®. The NEW Fall Savers® Wireless eliminates the cord between the monitor and sensor pad. This results in less work for nursing staff, improved safety for patients and reduced wear and tear on sensor pads. Wireless advantages include the ability to use one monitor with two sensor pads simultaneously and support for many new wireless devices.

BENEFITS INCLUDE: Safer for patients; less work for staff Bed and chair pads available One monitor works with two sensor pads Integrates with most nurse call systems A variety of options, including: Call button Pager

Floor sensor mat Wireless door/window exit alerts

TREADNOUGHT ®FLOOR SENSOR PAD The TreadNought® Floor Sensor Pad is built to last with a durable construction that far out lasts the competition. Our antibacterial floor sensor pad is compatible with most nurse call systems or can be used with a portable pager to sound an alert when a person steps on to the sensor pad. Caregivers typically place the sensor pad at the bedside, in a doorway or other locations to monitor persons at risk for falls or wandering. An optional anti-slip mesh reduces the potential for slippage on hard surface floors.

FEATURES INCLUDE: Connects directly to most nurse call systems High Quality anti-bacterial Floor Sensor Pad Large Size Pad: Measures (L) 91cm x (H) 61cm Options (sold separately): Anti-slip mesh for hard surface floors See the advert on this page for further details or visit www.fallsavers.co.uk.

Lotus Care Technology The NurseAlert pressure mat has been one of the most successful floor pressure mats due to it being non slip and carpeted which makes it feel very natural under a residents foot.

Lotus Care Technology Ltd have many other fall saving devices that can give you peace of mind whilst caring for this at risk of falls.

Having many years of experience in fitting and maintaining

Nurse Call Systems helps the guys at Lotus Care Technology understand that every home is different and has different needs. They can specify not only the best system for the environmental factors in the home but also take into consideration the best products that will make your carers and nurses jobs that little bit easier.

Visit www.lctuk.com for details.

THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023 | PAGE 41

TECHNOLOGY AND SOFTWARE

Pass Profile 2023

PASS supports over 1,000 care providers every day, giving them access to market leading care management tools hand in hand with unlimited 24/7/365 support from our dedicated and friendly PASS team.

Assured by NHS Transformation Directorate, PASS provides a secure platform that allows you to plan, record and evidence the care you deliver. The only assured solution built specifically for the home care sector, it provides comprehensive real-time functionality and allows you to share progress against outcomes with customisable, exportable reports.

CARE PLANNING AND ROSTERING FROM A SINGLE PLATFORM To meet the wider needs of the PASS community All-in-one PASS has recently been launched , bringing advanced rostering functionality to our established digital care planning platform. As a result advanced staff scheduling, payroll and invoicing functionality is now seamlessly linked with care planning and reporting, reducing the technical complexity, risk and overhead associated with integrating two separate systems.

As a result, PASS now provides an all-in-one suite of digital care management tools, available from a single platform, designed to: • Save you time • Increase the efficiency of your teams • Improve the quality of care

• Deliver better outcomes

INTEGRATED HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE Our commitment to the continual evolution of PASS is further illustrated by the addition of GP Connect.

The first product of its type to offer this feature, PASS is still one of only a handful of digital care management solutions to have completed this NHS Digital integration, and is the only one offering it to the home care market.

PASS GP Connect provides authorised social care staff with realtime access to their client’s GP records. It makes medical information available when and where it is needed, leading to improvements in both care safety and outcomes: • Visibility of allergies, vaccinations and medications, especially useful for clients unable to reliably share their personal information • Using medical information to inform care planning • Ensuring that the right medication is delivered to the right person in the timeliest manner. In one case, this allowed the administration of antibiotics on a Friday evening, aiding the service user’s swift recovery from infection Available to all PASS users at no additional cost, PASS GP Connect is significantly more efficient than waiting for a GP response. It’s also a positive step forward on the path to the DHSC’s goal for widespread digitally enabled care and is in full alignment with their ambition for joined up care for everyone.

Get in touch: www.everylifetechnologies.com hello@everylifetechnoloiges.com

Blaucomm Ltd - Telecommunications & Networks Blaucomm’s Nurse Call Messaging Service (NMS) is the market leading solution to remove the dependency on noisy nurse call panels and pagers, through its intelligent software, which delivers the alerts straight to the care staff who need them.

Care homes are rapidly introducing smartphones for digital care planning and eMar - now, the same devices can be used to receive the nurse call alerts they need for the residents under their care.

Furthermore, Blaucomm NMS is deeply linked into Person Centred Software MCM, so call bell data is linked straight to care plans. This unlocks a huge benefit to care homes to enhance the staff performance with how they accept and respond to residents, which ultimately promotes better response times and visibility for management to audit their performance.

The best part is that Blaucomm NMS links into your existing nurse call system - we work with all major brands such as Aidcall, ARM, Courtney Thorne, C-TEC, ENS, Intercall, Medicare, SAS and TeleAlarm.

Care operators are constantly recognising Blaucomm NMS for its reliability and dependability to their care operations, which is why we’ve been chosen time and time again over other solutions.

Head of IT Trudi Harrow at WCS Care had this to say about Blaucomm NMS: “We find Blaucomm is a genuinely fantastic company with a reliable product.

We have a range of nurse call systems at different sites and the NMS system integrates to them and allows us to compare response times between sites. In addition, the integration to Person Centred Software is revolutionary.

We would highly recommend this to anybody who wants to replace expensive pagers and silence those annoyingly loud nurse call screens!”

To find out more about Blaucomm NMS, visit www.blaucomm.co.uk/healthcare Ssee the advert on the front cover for more details.

PAGE 42 | THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023

TECHNOLOGY AND SOFTWARE Autumna Increases Enquiries For Care Homes Using Digital Mapping to its impressive pedigree and how accessible the software was."

"Plotting providers and care seekers from the last four years on the same map, instantly gave us a clear picture of demand hotspots, along with hotspots for the type and cost of care being sought. It’s a different way of looking at our data and creates new insights which we’ve been able to share with customers. The approach eliminates a lot of risk for them by revealing which of their locations are best suited to invest in a premium profile so helps create a more reliable relationship with us.”

Four Seasons Health Care Group upgraded a single listing to the premium level and saw a 40% increase in enquiries. As a result, it decided to look at other areas and increased the number of upgraded listings to 40 homes and the number of enquiries generated more than doubled.

“Seeing where demand is coming from on a map instantly reveals where we should invest in more premium profiles which helps maximise our marketing investment,” said Tessa Matthews, Head of Autumna, the UK’s largest directory of care home and retirement living providers, is using digital mapping software from Esri UK to help its customers market their properties more effectively and increase queries from care seekers.

Using spatial analysis to identify where most care seeker queries are coming from, Autumna is able to tell care providers which properties are best suited to promote on its platform using premium profiles. One care provider, Four Seasons Health Care Group, has seen queries from care seekers more than double across 40 care homes since using the service.

The new mapping solution from Esri UK replaces manual processes using spreadsheets and static PDF reports. By visualising query traffic on an interactive map dashboard, the data is validated as users can see it is real. Autumna introduced the new mapping technology as it wanted to understand the impact of location on searches for care homes and help care providers achieve the best ROI on their marketing spend.

“We needed to examine which care homes in the country were in the best location to receive the largest number of enquiries possible and we could only do this with geospatial technology,” explained Debbie Harris, founder of Autumna.

“We chose to work with Esri UK due

Marketing and Digital, Four Seasons Health Care Group.

Esri geospatial technology is also being used to support Autumna’s recently launched Dashboard for Accelerated Discharge tool (D.A.D.). By automating the currently manual process of searching for care, D.A.D. works with discharge teams and care providers to identify available, appropriate care within 60 minutes of a search request being performed. Esri technology enables users to forecast how the demand versus availability is going to change in the future.

Future plans include using the demand data to advise providers where is best to open a new care home. Autumna is also planning to feed census and other demographic data into the system to understand population changes and trends over time which might impact the industry.

“The use of spatial analysis in the care sector is relatively new,” continued Debbie. “We began working with Esri UK and experimenting with its geospatial software over a year ago and it’s now integrated into our business. We knew we had a lot of data that we weren’t using properly and location is perhaps the most important part of a search for care and very difficult to analyse without a map. Now we can easily demonstrate where care requirements are coming from along with budget hotspots. The geospatial approach lets us understand the care seeker better and the more we understand them, the more we can improve our processes.”

About Esri UK Founded in 1969, Esri is the global market leader in Geographic Information System (GIS) software, mapping and spatial analysis and today has 4,000 staff in 73 countries. Esri UK customers include UK Health Security Agency, Public Health Scotland and NHS South, Central and West Commissioning Support Unit.

Website: www.esriuk.com/health Email: healthcare@esriuk.com Tel: 01296 745599

Nourish Care Partners with Maldaba to Improve Personalised Care Delivery for People with Learning Disabilities Leading digital social care records provider Nourish has partnered with Maldaba, whose Hear Me Now app enables people to capture and share information about themselves, to support the delivery and tracking of high-quality, complex, personalised care.

Hear Me Now allows those with learning disabilities to play a more active role in the planning and implementation of their care and well-being. The app has been live since 2016 (originally known as My Health Guide) and was designed with and for people with learning disabilities. It has since enabled groups such as those with autism, dementia and other cognitive challenges to have more control over their care.

People with learning disabilities die on average 20 years younger than the general population, and this technology aims to address inequalities in care in line with the LeDeR review and national agenda for service improvement for people with learning disabilities and autism.

Combining Hear Me Now and Nourish’s expertise in digital care planning will bring benefits to service users, their families and care providers alike, and improve outcomes across the board.

At Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust, Hear Me Now allowed for a 30% reduction in service use, which created space for reducing waiting lists and pressure on other areas of the service. National care provider Hft were able to re-use 243 contact hours at a single service, within a one-year period, enabling greater independence in daily activities for people they support. There are other efficiency benefits for staff, as they are able to enter information alongside the person they are supporting in a more engaging way.

Lorenzo Gordon, Director, Maldaba Ltd comments: “Partnering with Nourish is an important step in joining-up data, so that it is entered only once, and flows to the right people at the right time. At Maldaba we see this as crucial to providing appropriate, correct and timely support to vulnerable people, and are delighted to be working with a provider such as Nourish, who shares this vision.”

Denise Tack, Director of Partnerships, Nourish Care adds: “,The Nourish Partnership Programme is designed around partnerships such as the one with Maldaba, with the impact on the end-user always being the core focus. Now is the time for care-sector technologies to work together in partnership, ending the reliance on pilots and siloed solutions. Digital transformation of our sector at scale can only truly happen if done collaboratively. We are proud to be partnering with such a like-minded organisation and look forward to seeing the positive benefits for our customers and individuals receiving support.”

For further information on Nourish Care visit www.nourishcare.co.uk

Managing Vital Communications: Mass Notification Systems In Healthcare Settings Chris Thomas, Infrastructure Manager at Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, shares insights into why and how to adopt mass notification systems in your care settings.

With communication being such a pivotal part of delivering the best outcomes for patients, it’s clear that driving effective communication is one of the most important pieces to the NHS’s organisational puzzle.

At Mid Cheshire, one of the core challenges was establishing a system through which IT could quickly and easily alert all staff regardless of whether they are in front of a device and regularly looking at emails and messages. Clinicians and other staff who are

not desk-based often find it difficult to closely monitor their emails, as at best they only intermittently have time to sit in front of a computer. This means that important messages can be missed. The advantage of mass notifications systems is that these messages are displayed on a wide range of devices, even those that are locked or include digital signage - bringing them immediately to the attention of the intended recipient.

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THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023 | PAGE 43

TECHNOLOGY AND SOFTWARE Managing Vital Communications: Mass Notification Systems In Healthcare Settings (CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE) By introducing a mass notification system, in addition to our standard communication channels, we can communicate efficiently with staff about network maintenance, system maintenance, critical infrastructure updates, IT system failures and emergency planning. This system has helped to reduce the impact to the IT Service Desk by not overwhelming them with calls and tickets raised by staff discovering problems during a maintenance window, or problems we are already aware of. Instead, as a team we can focus on resolving outages as quickly as possible.

Mass notification systems also offer advantages in terms of supporting emergency and lockdown procedures, with some even offering pre-set “emergency response” alerts triggered by a hot-key combination to facilitate their use in time-sensitive situations. Routine alerts – such as fire drills – can be automatically scheduled in advance. Additionally, in situations where a mass response is required from staff – such as major trauma – staff can be notified instantaneously, giving staff as much precious time as possible to prepare. Mass notifications can also support forward planning for staff, giving them advance notice of system

outages and technical upgrades.

As with adopting any amendments to protocol, bringing staff along with you is crucial to ensuring a smooth implementation. It's likely that there will be an appetite amongst your colleagues for adopting such a system; at Mid Cheshire, colleagues were extremely receptive and co-operative due to the evident need to improve communication delivery.

Having a clear chain of prioritisation of messages additionally will allow the system to work most efficiently. Allowing too many people to access the system or issuing messages too regularly dilutes its effectiveness, as the service should be reserved for critical messaging. An overload of messages is likely to result in people not taking notice in the messages themselves, rendering the service less effective.

Mass notification systems, available in many forms, are a readily available tool to help you create clear lines of communication in a care setting. By streamlining the transmission of key messages, you can alleviate pressures on your colleagues at all levels, ultimately allowing you to deliver the best care outcomes to clients and patients.

Innovative care home software solutions from Ablyss “It’s not just about what we do it’s about what we can do for you”!

There will be big changes over the next 12 months in the residential and nursing care sector. With around 50%

of homes still using paper systems to plan and record their care, the NHS Transformation Directorate have big

ideas which, whilst exciting, might seem daunting to those without the proper tools to make these ideas a reality.

So where to begin? Well, we here at Ablyss have 20 years of experience developing software for the care

Industry. We know how difficult running a care home can be at the best of times and we have drawn on our knowledge and experience to build a duo of care management offerings:

• Blyssful, our award winning cloud-based care management system for new and existing customers, making the

Don’t just take our word for it, here’s a

small selection of our many satisfied

customers:

“It’s not technology for technology’s

sake. Irrefutably, it helps us to deliver a much better service to our clients.”

Elizabeth & Roberta House

“We invested in Ablyss CMS a number of

system easily accessible from anywhere and by anyone, with permission to do so.

years ago, and it has proved to be one of

to achieve compliance within your business.

Prospect House

• Ablyss CMS, our on-premises solution, can help you to plan and evidence the care that you provide, supporting you The emphasis is on care management, recording, and analysis, and both solutions have been designed with

the management, carers, and residents of the care home in mind. The result is time saved, admin simplified, and safe and personalised provision of care, so you can focus more on those in need.

With a fully UK based team, our care consultants are always on hand to provide training and answer your

questions, whilst our support team will help you to customise your system, set up integrations with your other systems, and ensure your software is always up to date.

the very best decisions we have made.”

We believe we can create a better way

to manage and connect your care.

Seeing is believing, so why not

arrange a demo with one of our product specialists.

Visit www.ablyss.co.uk

PAGE 44 | THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023

TECHNOLOGY AND SOFTWARE Technology Enabled Care: The Next Generation of Care Provision At The Access Group we are aware of the challenges of maintaining quality care facing the care industry. It is estimated that there are 1.98 million social care requests made every year and with limiting budgets and staff recruitment at a all time high it is getting increasingly difficult to ensure care providers are constantly delivering better person-centred care.

We are delighted to announce our latest solution which will sit within our Workspace for Care, Access Assure. Our Assure ecosystem will sit at the centre of our care offering to prevent, monitor, and react to social care needs as they change. Here our technology enabled care and digital telecare goes further than just a digital social alarm.

We combine both traditional reactive alarm functionality with proactive digital monitoring to deliver better proactive and preventative care.

Our digital monitoring tools allows for continuous data capture and analysis for care providers and clinical consultants, aggregating the data collected and transforming it into actionable insight. In just a matter of 14

days our Assure ecosystem can learn individual daily routines to notify care providers and loved ones of any changes before something more critical takes place.

The Assure ecosystem supports people recover across the care continuum to prolong independence, provide reassurance, delay future care needs, and reduce hospital discharge delays to help budgets stretch further and help reach the demand easier.

Technology Enabled Care is more than just a single component or sensor it’s the combined sum of all its parts. To enable this Assure integrates with 3rd party sensors and devices and a variety of our other care solutions. This ensures we can deliver a level of intelligence and can help join up data to provide insight on wellbeing to deliver a preventative approach to care and improve care planning, care management, and care delivery to give individuals the freedom to do more.

To find out more about how our digital telecare helps deliver better proactive and preventative care, contact us today at www.theaccessgroup.com/en-gb/health-social-care/form/digital-telecare-demo-contact-form/

Syncurio: An Innovative Solution Unleashed Through Collaboration In an industry where ticking clocks are as daunting as eroding margins, the quest for comprehensive care home management software that reflects bespoke operational needs can resemble a significant endeavour. Sensing a gap in the market, a network of care home operators pooled their insights, birthing Syncurio, a paradigm-shifting software, purpose-built for their unique sector.

The genesis of Syncurio can be traced back to collective frustration. Hindered by existing software options, operators grappled with recurring challenges, from managing absenteeism to accurate billing and budgeting. Observing the domino effect these issues were having on business performance, this network of industry stalwarts took the bull by the horns.

The strength of unity proved encouraging as this network pooled their knowledge and insights. Their objective: to counteract their shared pain points through collaboration, culminating in the creation of Syncurio. This comprehensive care management software is a product of firsthand industry knowledge, catering to the distinct needs of care home operators. Sarah a member of IT services at a major care home group commented “The Syncurio team have been a pleasure to deal with - always eager to hear and act on feedback and suggestions for improvement.”

Syncurio is a product meticulously tailored to remove operator frustrations. Its features include userfriendly interfaces, intuitive scheduling tools, a state-of-the-art clocking in mechanism and enhanced billing functions. The software’s robust data analytics capabilities offer operators invaluable insights into

resident care, resource allocation, and staff performance. By leveraging cuttingedge technology, Syncurio is upping the ante in the care home industry.

The software’s user-friendly interfaces promote operational efficiency, allowing staff to navigate the system seamlessly, optimising their time and enabling them to focus on providing quality care. Operations Director, Jennifer said of Syncurio “Being able to manage staffing budgets and rosters alongside resident fee data has enabled us to get the balance right between high levels of care and financial sustainability.”.

Despite being a relative newcomer, Syncurio is generating considerable market interest. As word spreads about this trailblazing software, care home operators of varied backgrounds are expressing interest in signing up. Syncurio’s burgeoning success is inspiring for operators grappling with similar challenges and accentuates the benefits of this ground-breaking solution.

Syncurio stands as an exemplar of the transformative potential of collaboration and innovation. Within a short period, it has proven itself as a game-changer, surmounting the limitations of existing care management software and heralding an era of streamlined operations and enhanced communication. The success story of Syncurio serves as a timely reminder of the catalytic results of industry-wide collaboration. As Syncurio gains traction, the care home industry is poised for significant advancements, fuelled by the spirit of collaboration and the pursuit of quality care.

To find out more, give us a call on 020 4525 0299 | Email us at info@syncurio.co.uk

PAGE 46 | THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023

PROPERTY AND FINANCE

Buying Or Selling A Care Home The care home industry has seen remarkable growth in recent years to meet the needs of an ageing population. At the same time, mounting regulations and rising operational costs make running a care home challenging. In this article, Paul Davies, Head of Commercial Property at Harper James (www.harperjames.co.uk), discusses the key considerations and procedures when buying or selling a care home.

• Costs approach: estimating the cost to replace the care home with a similar one • Market capitalisation: calculating the total value of a company’s equity (often used for care homes that are part of a larger portfolio) The appraisal process usually starts with an inspection to gather details about the property. The appraiser then collects and analyses relevant market data, and applies the chosen appraisal method to calculate the care home’s value.

ARE YOU PREPARED TO PURCHASE OR SELL YOUR CARE HOME?

PREPARING FOR SALE OR PURCHASE

Care homeowners sell for a variety of reasons. You may be disposing of an underperforming unit from your portfolio, retiring from the industry or pursuing other interests altogether. Whatever your motivation, take care that it is well-informed and unrushed.

Equally, purchasing a care home is a huge commitment. Reflect on your passion for high-quality care, as well as your long-term goals to decide if this is the right field for you.

What steps do you need to take to prepare for a property purchase First, decide whether you are purchasing as a sole trader, in a partnership or through a limited company.

Next, do your market research and define your requirements (location, size, specialised services etc). Recruit a specialist buying agent to identify suitable options. Finally, choose a professional advisory team to guide you through the legal and financial aspects of the purchase.

Sellers often need to decide between two types of sale: 1. Asset sale - selling specific assets which make up your business 2.Share sale - selling the majority of shares in your business and handing over control Option two is generally preferred because buyers acquire the entire business, and sellers get a clean break.

REVIEWING YOUR PERSONAL AND FINANCIAL SITUATION Before buying or selling, assess your readiness for such a transaction.

Personally, consider your experience and expertise in the industry, whether you are qualified to manage care home operations or if you'll need support and training. Reflect on your strength of character and whether you have the resilience and business acumen to succeed. Lastly, contemplate the potential impact on your lifestyle, including time commitments and work-life balance.

Financially, consider how much can you afford to invest and your creditworthiness. Bear in mind the inherent risks involved in taking on a business and what impact this might have on your personal finances.

For sellers, ensure financial records are all in order ready to present to potential buyers for scrutiny.

DETERMINING THE VALUE OF THE CARE HOME: The factors that influence the selling price include: • location • occupancy rates • financial performance • size and capacity • condition and age of the facility • staffing and reputation • overall market conditions Well-maintained care homes with higher occupancy rates, healthy financial records, and a strong reputation are likely to achieve higher selling prices. Freehold buildings tend to be more valuable than leased premises. Prices may also be driven up by limited supply and high demand.

APPRAISAL METHODS AND PROCESS Common valuation methods include: • Comparison approach: comparing the care home to similar local properties that have been recently sold • Income approach: estimating potential income based on occupancy rates, operating expenses etc

EXPLORING FINANCING OPTIONS There are both traditional and alternative ways to fund a purchase: • Commercial mortgage: this commonly used loan is typically secured against the care home premises.

• Release built-up equity: this could be in other properties you own or within your portfolio.

• Seller financing: sometimes sellers accept a large downpayment with the remainder via instalments with interest.

• Equity finance: seek private investment or equity-based crowdfunding. Another option is forming partnerships to share the financial load.

Talking to a commercial property solicitor can help you decide which funding method is best for your individual circumstances.

NEGOTIATION ADVICE Effective negotiation techniques for a successful transaction Applying good negotiation techniques keeps things moving forward, and involves: being clear on your overriding objectives for the sale or purchase from the outset; maintaining flexibility for areas that do not impact your overriding objectives; using objective criteria such as market data, inspections, or appraisals to justify your position; keeping alternative options in mind; and finding mutually beneficial solutions.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE DUE DILIGENCE PROCESS Due diligence involves investigating what you are about to buy to uncover any potential issues.

From a business perspective, assess the financial performance of the care home and verify that it is meeting all applicable operating rules and regulations.

Standard conveyancing searches and enquiries reveal important information about the property itself.

This includes planning restrictions, outstanding charges, boundary disputes and ownership issues.

Commissioning a property inspection will identify any potential issues such as structural damage, hazards or necessary repairs.

During this process, commercial property solicitors will seek to negotiate any onerous obligations in the property deeds that may impact its value, future use, and ongoing costs. This includes covenants which restrict certain activities on the property, rights of way allowing others to use or access the land, or stringent clauses within leases, such as wide-ranging repairing responsibilities.

COMPLETING THE TRANSACTION Exchange of contracts Once due diligence is complete, negotiations ironed out, and funding arrangements finalised - it's time to sign and swap contracts. This key milestone makes the transaction legally binding.

POST-ACQUISITION CONSIDERATIONS Ensuring continuity with staff and suppliers Following exchange, focus on implementing a smooth transition. Establish open lines of communication with staff members and engage early with key suppliers to ensure continuity. Get to know the residents, and be considerate when introducing new measures.

Making sure you remain compliant with the rules and regulations related to the care home sector All care homes are registered and regulated by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). Going forward, ensure the care home continues to meet fundamental standards of quality and safety, and that any new measures introduced are compliant.

SUMMARY As we’ve seen, buying or selling your care home requires careful planning, research and preparation to ensure a smooth transaction. Sellers should assess their motivations and ensure their financial records are in order, while buyers need to evaluate their personal and financial readiness. Seeking legal advice at the outset will help you achieve the best possible outcome.

Care Home Finance from Global Business Finance From helping clients make their first purchase

through to allowing groups to grow significantly in size we assist at every stage of your business Global assists clients throughout the U.K. who specialise in the healthcare sector to achieve their objectives of purchase, development and refinance.

We have organised over £1.8bn for clients in the past 30 years, providing clients with competitively priced funding to refinance existing debt, ease cashflow and develop businesses further.

expansion.

Every proposal is individual and deserves to be treated that way, so we hope you will allow us to be of assistance to you and call us to chat through your plans and requirements, I am sure we will be able to tailor a facility to your requirements.

Call us on 01242 227172 or e-mail us at enquiries@globalbusinessfinance.net

THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023 | PAGE 47

EDUCATION AND TRAINING

New RoSPA Qualifications-Certified Dementia Course Launches

As dementia rates rise, the importance of upskilling those working in the care sector on the condition has never been greater. That’s why leading qualifications provider, RoSPA Qualifications, has teamed up with EDGE Services, a specialist people handling training provider, to develop an innovative new qualification to help care workers understand the debilitating condition.

The Dementia Care Key Trainer’s Certificate, that runs as a two-day course, provides delegates with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to train others in dementia awareness, including how to spot symptoms, challenges it can present and how to work effectively. Upon completion of the course, delegates receive a certificate of achievement which is valid for two years.

By the end of the course, professionals will have learnt: • What is meant by the term dementia • The different types of dementia and potential their causes • The risk factors, signs and symptoms of dementia • The current and projected statistics about the incidence of dementia including on the individual and those living with or caring for them • The main challenges facing those working with dementia • Effective strategies to assist staff working with people with dementia to reduce the impact of the challenges faced and how to improve quality of life • The importance of record-keeping and documentation • A knowledge of the legal issues involved in working effectively with people with dementia.

RoSPA Qualifications is an awarding organisation regulated by Ofqual (the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation) that designs, develops, and certifies a range of vocationally related qualifications.

EDGE Services is already a recognised RoSPA Qualification Centre, which enables it to deliver a suite of customised awards.

Debbie Clueit, RoSPA Qualifications’ External Verifier, said: “We were delighted that RoSPA Qualifications was able to help develop EDGE Services’ Dementia Care Key Trainer’s Certificate – a highly important course for anyone working with adults with dementia.

“As an intensive two-day course, it covers a wide range of important topics, from spotting the signs of dementia through to dealing with challenging behaviour and beyond. Those who complete the course achieve a RoSPA Qualifications-approved certificate that is valid for two years.

“We worked with EDGE Services to ensure the course was accessible and that it met the Level 4 Ofqual descriptors, along with developing the learning outcomes, content and assessment process.”

Ruth Hewitt, Operations Manager at EDGE Services, said: “The course is aimed at those whose staff may work with adults who live with dementia - both in the health care sector and beyond. It provides delegates with the expertise to train others in awareness of dementia that can be adopted to deal with symptoms, challenges and how to work effectively.”

For further information on RoSPA Qualifications, please visit www.rospa.com/health-and-safety-qualifications For further information on The Dementia Care Key Trainer’s Certificate, please visit www.edgeservices.co.uk/courses/dementia-awareness-key-trainer-certificate/

Policies and Procedures Within Social Care The delivery of safe care is the paramount responsibility of social care providers. Central to achieving this is the governance framework adopted by service providers. And at the core of this framework are policies and procedures. These enable the provider to comply – and evidence compliance – with relevant legislation and regulations, as well as facilitating best practices, supporting business needs, and assisting in recognising and managing risks.

Good governance care itself is an integral part of health and social regulation, Regulation 17 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 stipulates that care providers must have systems and processes in place that ensure they can meet the requirements of Regulations 4 to 20A. Policies and procedures not only ensure that providers are compliant with this regulation and working within the law; they also enable providers to drive improvement and protect the people who access services and receive care.

Providers also have a legal duty of care to the people they employ. Policies and procedures should provide clear guidelines to staff on how the organisation operates, as well as informing them of best practices and processes to be followed.

Policies should be reviewed annually as a minimum to ensure they are still fit for purpose and align with legal and regulatory requirements. They should be reviewed not only by employees of the business, but also by experts in various subject matters (e.g., infection control or medicines management).

For many small- to medium-sized providers, there may not be the in-house skills, knowledge, and experience to complete such a robust annual review.

Many choose instead to purchase their policies and procedures from a reputable provider like W&P Compliance & Training, who will also complete reviews and ensure their policies and procedures remain up to date. This way a provider not only ensures they remain compliant; they also benefit from best practice policies and procedures that provide a solid foundation for safe working practices and – ultimately – protect and support service users and staff.

Ben Erskine – Director at W&P Compliance & Training www.wandptraining.co.uk | Tel: 01305 767104 See the advert on page 2 for further information.

Care Homes Set To Save Thousands Of Pounds Thanks To Free Training From Health Education England Anenta plays key role in developing healthcare waste training module The roll-out of a free new e-learning module on healthcare waste - set up by Health Education England - is set to bring major benefits to the care home sector, says leading independent healthcare waste management company Anenta.

The training - developed in association with Anenta to help all healthcare professionals - is seen as key to building better understanding of waste management in care homes, which have long struggled with managing healthcare waste effectively.

This is backed up by detailed compositional audits of care home waste undertaken both by Anenta and, separately, by the EA, which have proven that a significant amount of contamination exists in the various waste streams produced by care homes.

Worryingly, the findings show that 70% of care home waste is consistently put in the wrong waste channels including 90% of clinical waste and 35% of offensive waste, which is regularly contaminated with recyclable materials.

Further analysis of over 2,500 primary care Duty of Care audits by Anenta has also shown that 58% of healthcare professionals with responsibility for waste management are unfamiliar with the Healthcare Technical Memorandum, the latest iteration of which came out in March 2023.

This has resulted in inadequate training and waste management policies, contributing to poor segregation and spiralling levels of waste being incorrectly disposed of, costing the care home sector heavily, and hampering sustainable waste targets.

The new e-training module aims to address this and is being provided free to remove all barriers and gaps in understanding that currently exist within care homes and the primary care sector.

Created with the help of Anenta, the new 30-45 minute training module, available here, is accessible free of charge via the Health Education England online portal.

It outlines what waste should go into which waste stream, correct segregation practices, and other important waste related guidance. This helps prevent low-risk items, which should cost £300-£500 per tonne for disposal as offensive waste, from being disposed of as infectious waste, costing upwards of £800 per tonne.

Vitally, the training also helps avoid the risk of waste contractors refusing to make collections from care homes due to their ‘non-compliance’, which could put care services at risk of disruption. This is avoided through the correct completion of a Pre-Acceptance Audit (PAA), which in the case of most care homes needs to be undertaken every five years - unless waste produced on site changes in its nature.

Where a care home produces more than five tonnes of clinical waste annually, a PAA will need to be undertaken every 12 months, remaining valid until renewal date or unless waste types undeclared in the pre-acceptance audit are discovered.

Commenting on the roll-out of the new free training, Graham Flynn, Director at Anenta, said: “We’ve worked hard on the development of the new e-learning training module alongside NHSE, IPC, Local Commissioners, and industry experts. The result is a course that’s accessible by all, and a risk assessment that can be used by all care homes to inform the way in which their waste is segregated.

“The adoption of the training and correct segregation is critical if the care home sector is to cut costs and achieve Net Zero targets. Changing waste disposal habits and practices prevents the unnecessary and expensive disposal of waste via inappropriate and environmentally damaging waste streams, such as incineration; instead ensuring that the majority of clinical waste is disposed of using either alternative treatments, or energy from waste processes that render healthcare waste safe.”

Graham Flynn added: “On average care homes are wasting £8,000 every year through poor waste management process and procurement. The training will play a big part in cutting that figure by improving waste management among staff. Importantly, it will also help care homes with their PAA audit, without which their healthcare waste cannot be collected, potentially resulting in enforcement action by the Environment Agency.”

For more information about Anenta, and its care home audit app, which gives care homes the ability to conduct compulsory clinical waste pre-acceptance and duty of care audits without the need for third-party on-site visits, in just 40 minutes, visit www.anentawaste.com or call 033 0122 2143.

PAGE 48 | THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023

RECRUITMENT

Rising to the Challenge of Recruitment and Retention

By Jackie Tritton, Chief Clinical Officer at Rennie Grove Peace Hospice Care (www.renniegrovepeace.org)

The shortage of staff across the care and nursing sectors is no secret. But with creativity and determination, organisations are working around the challenges by maximising the resources they do have, while attracting new staff to fill vacant roles. Here Jackie Tritton, Chief Clinical Officer at Rennie Grove Peace Hospice Care, tells us how her teams are recruiting, retaining and repurposing staff to ensure the charity can not only maintain services, but grow them during a merger.

“When the trustees of Peace Hospice Care and Rennie Grove Hospice Care announced their intention to merge last June, it was with the ambition of serving a growing population of people living with progressive life-limiting illnesses, reaching more people who need our support and strengthening our services. This is all playing out against a backdrop of staff shortages across the entire sector that have blighted all care settings for years. We knew that in order to deliver expanded services to our new, larger patch, we would need to think creatively about recruitment challenges.

“In addition to the national challenges relating to the economy, NHS and the Covid-19 pandemic, our location in Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire brings with it unique challenges. These include proximity to a number of hospitals, including the big London hospitals, and specialist palliative care (SPC) providers, meaning there is a huge amount of employee choice in our area.

“Over the past year we have been working hard on retaining our existing staff – through reviewing everything about salary, progression, pensions and benefits, as well as working closely with employees to manage team morale and culture.

“Despite this, recruitment of new staff remains a challenge and we have a 31% vacancy rate in our clinical teams.

“For us, it has therefore been vital to focus on creativity in the way we work with existing staff and resources. One example of this has been our nurse associate role. By supporting our senior health care assistants to progress to registered nurse roles, we can nurture existing talent and close recruitment gaps, while rewarding the loyalty and hard work of our dedicated HCA workforce.

“We have also created Community Senior staff nurse roles to expand our Palliative care Response (PRT) teams. These are highly skilled nurses who can support patients in the community during an emergency or sudden deterioration as well as supporting earlier discharges from hospital, through intensive intervention, to meet patients’ wishes.

“Other new roles – such as Allied Health Professional (AHP) assistant practitioners, nurse consultants and paramedics, are allowing us to expand the team and recruit new colleagues, without relying on the existing pool of traditional, registered nurses, which we know is finite in number and much sought after across the board.

“As well as upskilling our own staff, we are actively working with partner organisations to share knowledge and develop the local workforce, to meet the needs of local people with progressive life-limiting illnesses. This includes rotational posts with organisations such as our local hospital and community trusts residential homes. By supporting staff from these partner organisations to complete secondments or placements in our Inpatient Unit, we can support them in developing their palliative care skills, which enables them to care for more patients in their own setting, reducing the needs for reliance on in-patient care, either in an acute hospital or a hospice.

“Broadening the types and range of roles within our teams has been hugely beneficial to our organisation.

It allows us to make sure that the right person with the right skills is seeing each patient at the right time.

Identifying patients’ needs and matching them with the most relevant professional in the team is ensuring we have a multidisciplinary approach with a wide range of skills to support patient-centred holistic care. This has reduced our reliance on registered nurses making up the majority of our clinical workforce and allowed us to continue delivering our vital services, while setting out our ambitions for growing and strengthening services in the years to come.”

Care As a Career – Not a Stepping Stone ‘Creating a Sustainable Skills Pipeline for Care’

By Andy Croudace, Director of Innovation at Advanced Health and Care (www.oneadvanced.com) At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, there is a serious staffing shortage in care. This is being exacerbated by increased Government scrutiny over the recruitment of migrant workers, not enough high quality new entrants to the profession, and by high staff turnover with many older, experienced workers deciding that enough is enough, and quitting.

A pervasive culture of low-pay and low value placed on care workers isn’t helping. It is no surprise that according to Advanced’s Care Providers Trends Report, 97% of care providers say they have problems recruiting staff and 98% have trouble with employee retention.

It isn’t a job for just anyone. During the hiring process 60% of employers in our survey said they received high numbers of applications from unsuitable candidates. It is imperative that care providers can find ways to reverse these trends, drive more applications from suitable candidates, attract more, high-quality talent and hold onto those people, nurturing their skills and commitment for the long-term. Many skills can be taught and developed, but the best carers have caring hardwired into their DNA. These are the people we want working in the care sector, as we try to ensure a sustainable, safe future for users and employees.

One of the solutions may lie in the Government’s push to phase out paper record-keeping and encourage the implementation of digital records within the adult social care sector. The aim is to achieve 80% compliance within the year, by March 2024, with full compliance as soon as possible afterwards. These will improve outcomes for those receiving care, minimise safety risks, allow staff to respond to needs more quickly, and to share important information quickly and securely.

This drive is part of a greater need to digitalise processes within care provision organisations. There is a need to attract more school and college leavers into the sector, to start what will ideally become a long and fulfilling career. This digital-native generation expects to use technology in their working lives, so it makes complete sense that employers who have already implemented the latest software that helps people do their jobs more effectively will attract the best of that new talent.

It is also crucial that employers look after their existing staff, ensuring continuity of care for their clients and retaining experienced mentors for new recruits. These employees have a wealth of knowledge, skills and experience that is vital for ensuring the delivery of high-quality care all clients deserve.

Disillusionment cannot be allowed to take root here.

Digital transformation is the key to improving the employee experience. Specifically-designed care sector technology can massively reduce time spent on paperwork, digitalising processes so repetitive sections of forms can be completed automatically. This gives staff more time to deliver care to clients. Digital

documents can’t be mislaid or lost, keeping the data within secure and making it easy for staff to refer to specific care plans, record diet and hydration information and other details for more joined-up and seamless processes. Digital records also offer more protection for staff when things go wrong as there is an irrefutable evidence trail that shows all procedures were followed correctly. Demonstrating compliance for CQC and others is crucial in such a highly-regulated sector.

Implementing a Learning and Development (L&D) programme for each employee not only ensures compliance with CQC requirements and those of other bodies, but also demonstrates to employees that each of them is valued accordingly. If we want people to look at care as a career, not just a stepping stone, we much ensure that long-term prospects and new opportunities are visible and attainable. Performance management can be a headache for managers dealing with staff working on different shifts, or a largely remote and mobile domiciliary team. Two-way conversations on digital platforms around targets for quality and delivery of care, recording and rewarding achievements as well as flagging any need for further training or support make it easier to monitor and manage individual performance.

We need to take care of the carers. Many are attracted to the sector because it allows them to have more flexibility with shifts and days worked, so it is crucial that employers maintain staffing levels enabling people to work the hours they want. Persistent understaffing impacts heavily on the remaining team, putting them under increased pressure and at greater risk of burnout. Managers are affected too and 62% of care provider managers told us they felt stressed and unable to cope all or some of the time. 36% of these said they would have to take time off sick in order to be able to cope. The last thing a short-staffed care provider needs is management absence, piling even more pressure onto others.

Digital solutions can transform rostering challenges, helping manage unexpected sickness or late requests for unspent leave more effectively. Sector-specific technology can also improve the problems with void management experienced by 95% of care providing organisations, giving them better visibility over crucial occupancy rates. 58% of the respondents in our survey have developed their own manual processes including spreadsheets to help give them advanced visibility of the business. These tools provide out-dated information for inaccurate decision-making while Cloud-based technology could give them instant access to accommodation and occupancy in real time.

Employers can use the data contained in their technology platforms to help them manage many of the day-to-day tasks more efficiently, supporting more effective recruitment and higher retention rates.

Employee data can be a powerful tool in gaining deeper workforce insights, helping employers identify trends that can help them make better decisions. This might be identifying the hardest-to-fill shifts, and then making recruitment for those a priority. Or it may shine a light on the circumstances that lead to higher rates of sickness absence, helping leaders to locate specific problems and make changes to reduce them.

In conclusion, technology can help elevate the status of the care delivery role, improving employee experience and developing talent for a sustainable pipeline of career-care providers. www.oneadvanced.com/campaign/new/health-and-care/advanced-care-trends-report-2023/

THE CARER | JUL/AUG 2023 | PAGE 49

RECRUITMENT

Recruiting Success with CVMinder ATS Care recruiting is currently challenging. So, why is CVMinder ATS a great choice for Care Providers?

Stuart Haddow, MD, suggests that its Ambassador Customers make the biggest difference.

Ambassadors include senior HR leaders from the Care sector. “They have proven to be great at overcoming recruiting headwinds” says Stuart.

CVMinder’s Ambassador Customers also guide CVMinder product improvement programme.

Using that great guidance delivers a competitive advantage for all CVMinder Care customers. Jack Morgan of Local Solutions agrees. “CVMinder has made the process as smooth and as streamlined as possible. That’s is critical when recruiting in a

demanding sector like care. It gives us central control of everything and the management information we generate from CVMinder has helped to improve our recruiting approach. Without CVMinder our recruiting costs would be much higher and good candidates would be lost in the administration clutter.”

Donna Newell of The Kent Autistic Trust says “CVMinder ensures that we are being responsive to applicants and the demands of our managers.

Having a one stop shop means that we can post and update jobs at the touch of a button. Receiving all applications online and using filter questions enables our recruiters to shortlist batches of applicants swiftly.”

T: 01634 202 101 E: enquiries@cvminder.co.uk W: cvminder.co.uk/care

In Dire Need Of Experienced Health Care Assistant, Senior Carer Or A Nurse?

JJ Recruitment has the large database of well qualified applicants with experience in the healthcare industry, such as health care assistants, senior carers, and nurses from overseas. We also have an expert team of solicitors for the necessary legal proceedings and advices.

WHY JJ? • We have very minimal processing fees.

• We assist you to get a sponsorship license.

• Qualified and experienced candidates from

overseas.

Tel: 01704 808227 www.jjcarerecruitment.co.uk admin@jjrecruitment.co.uk

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