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CARINGNEWS
Employee attitudes represent greatest challenge, claim
Ann Martin and Dean Nimmo.
Ann helps Dean with project A PART-TIME carer at a Glasgow care home has worked closely with a resident to complete a project for college. Dean Nimmo, who works at Lambhill Court Ltd’s Florence House, spent time interviewing and getting to know Ann Martin over 12 weeks to compile and produce a photo memory album about her as part of his course at Cardonald College. It involved recording aspects of Ann’s past and present life, and the whole process built up a relationship between them both. Ann shared lots of stories with Dean and they both enjoyed working together on the
project. Dean said: “In producing Ann’s photo memory album and hearing first-hand the decisions and sometimes hardships that shaped her life, I got an in-depth picture of her life history. The whole experience has been very rewarding for me too.” The end product was a piece of creative work which celebrates her life, and emphasis was placed on using photographs to bring her life story book ‘to life’. Joan Sands, Florence House manager, added: “The process of gathering stories from Ann appeared to be therapeutic for her and
EMPLOYEE attitudes represent the greatest challenge for social care professionals in implementing health and safety policies, according to research. When asked to rate by greatest difficulty for a study by the National Association for Safety and Health in Care Services, over a fifth (20.9 per cent) highlighted employee attitudes, compared with just over a tenth marking operational and practice, and under five per cent staff skills and training. The association polled 300 professionals in the social care sector by email in April 2013, in advance of its Learning and Development Forum on June 20 in Manchester. Other key findings include: Almost a third report that financial resources devoted to health and safety are being reduced. Nearly one in 10 do not provide accident statistics, and a fifth do not provide accident investigation reports, for senior managers. Eight per cent find health and safety compliance guidance ‘confusing’. Over 85 per cent rate the impact of negative publicity surrounding the sector as challenging. Fire safety tops the list of health
and safety concerns, followed by medication errors, challenging behaviour, Legionella, scalding and nutrition. “This research suggests some interesting but worrying trends, said NASHiCS national chairman Chris Jackson. “First, that employee attitude problems rate so high in comparison with possibly more obviously ‘fixable’ problems such as operational processes and skills training. Second, that there appears to be an information gap in many organisations, where senior management are not receiving appropriate frontline reports regarding health and safety incidents. “Third, although the figure is just eight per cent, that a significant number of professionals find health and safety policy confusing. This is a concern given the emphasis that the Health and Safety Executive has recently put into providing guidance. Additionally, respondent comments supporting the ranking of fire safety as top concern indicate that this is a major area of confusion. Finally, that malnutrition ranks low on the list of concerns indicates a need for greater understanding of the way in which nutrition impacts on wellbeing, health and safety.”