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Pride Event
Asquith Hall Nursing Home in Todmorden put on a fabulous Pride Party in August. I was delighted to be invited and went along to join in the fun on a glorious summer day. The service specialises in care for people living with dementia and people with mental health issues. The staff decided that a Pride event within the service was a person centred approach to celebrating all things LGBTQ+. They recognised that bigger public celebrations had the potential to be intimidating for some of their residents, and so set about planning an event to support people to celebrate in a way they could enjoy.
The celebrations were open to all residents, families, friends and staff. There were visits from performing artists such as a fire eater, stilt walkers, dancers and a burlesque act. Staff dressed in rainbow colours, there was a children’s area with rainbow coloured floor tiles, creative crafts and a fun atmosphere.
Residents and families were introduced to the celebrations in a sensitive way. Some people, because of their condition, enjoyed the colour and pageant for only a short time, others were happy to watch performances and dance along to the music.
The event was supported by a number of stalls offering goods, advice and information on a LGBTQ theme. The celebration was the culmination of a week long focus on LGBTQ+ issues and included:
LGBTQ Awareness and Positive Identities training delivered by Barnados
TransAwareness training, delivered by Jenny Anne Bishop OBE
Older People and Sexuality delivered by Dr Jane Youell
Sexual Health delivered by Steve Searby from the Calderdale sexual health service
The feedback from residents, staff and families was very positive. Asquith Hall are blazing a trail for LGBTQ awareness in residential settings. This is part of the service’s overall attention to the Equality Act 2010 and the protected characteristics where the focus is on reducing the risk of discrimination and ensuring everyone can live their lives in the way they choose. Well done Asquith Hall, you are an example for us all!
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Care Plans-what to include. (Adult Social Care)
July 2018
I am often asked how to draw up really effective care plans. Below is my guide to producing care plans which will support you to provide people with truly Outstanding care.
Include each person’s wishes, feelings and preferences about their care for each area. Start the care plan with this. Use a heading like- “Person’s views and preferences”. If the person does not have capacity to give their views, consult with their representatives, (family, friend, advocate). Also, keep the person under observation and include how they respond to care and treatment in this area.They may not say how they feel but they will show what they prefer by non verbal communication and how they respond. Write your observations into the care plan as evidence of consultation with the person.
Desired outcome. Agree goals with the person if possible, or with representatives if not. Again, consider from their non verbal communication and responses to care and treatment what the desired outcome and goals could be. Make goals structured and progressive where possible. Write the desired outcome and goal into this part of the care plan.
Instructions for staff including how the person has been involved in the decision. Include that consent must be sought. For clinical areas of care plans such as tissue viability or nutrition and hydration, make instructions clear and brief without too much narrative, bullet points are fine. However, where you are setting down instructions for staff around non clinical areas, a short narrative which includes how you respond to people’s individual and changing needs is evidence of best practice.
Explicitly include in the care plan advice from specialist health care professionals you have referred to, for example learning disabilities nurse or SALT. Include the detail. Don’t just keep the health care professional letter at the back of the file. Put the information into the care plan. Keep the letter if there is one with the care plan it has informed.
Cross reference to other relevant care plans and risk management plans. (Risk management is a more accurate way of describing what you are doing than risk assessment. If you assess the risk and don’t do anything about managing it, clearly that’s not good practice.) Don’t be tempted to incorporate the assessment and management of risk into the care plan. It’s too easy for it to remain brief and go unnoticed. Inspectors are looking for separate risk management plans where risk is managed.
Review care plans regularly with a short narrative, and include people’s views or responses to their care. Where there is dynamic review which replaces previous versions of the care plan, provide evidence of previous versions for inspectors to see.
Where you can, include an assessment of where there may be discrimination under the Equality Act 2010 in each area of the care plan. Think about the protected characteristics. The most obvious one may be preventing discrimination due to disability, but also think about the others. (The rest are age, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.) You may find that it is easiest to consider the Equality Act around social and recreational activities, but there will be ways you can address this in other areas too. For example, in ‘Communication’ the person will have the hearing equipment, dental care and visual aids they are assessed to need. You can add that this is to promote independent communication and to make sure the person is not discriminated against on the grounds of disability in line with the equality act 2010.
Hope that helps!
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Equally Outstanding
Welcome to the second Blog from Outstanding Care Consultancy! This month I am focusing on an important piece of guidance developed by CQC in partnership with key organisations such as Care England, the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE), Healthwatch and The National LGB & T Partnership.
This guidance stresses that none of the common success factors in the best care providers surveyed took a large amount of resources. “Their success was based on changing behaviours and thinking about issues.” This shows that Outstanding care can be achieved by every provider, not just those with deep pockets.
Equally Outstanding is available through the CQC website, and covers the importance of having regard to Equality and Human Rights for both users of services and the staff who provide care. The guide describes how paying attention to this key area will lift the quality of care across the board. It gives examples; high staff turnover and absenteeism are most often linked to equality related causes such as harassment, bullying and abuse at work. Address this and you reduce staff turnover. This leads to happier, more committed staff and people who benefit from the reassurance which comes from building a relationship with trusted care givers.
Skills for Care research has discovered that Values Based Recruitment also leads to low turnover of staff. Values based recruitment means a service recruits staff who have an approach to care which embodies qualities such as respect, regard for dignity and compassion and who are more likely to work as a team to achieve an outstanding outcome.
Equally Outstanding provides a very useful summary of care provider’s legal requirement with regard to Equality and Human Rights, with an emphasis on the Equality Act 2010 relating to service provision and employment, among other legislation.
The guidance has found that provider’s success factors include:
1. Committed leadership
2. Acting on Equality and Human Rights principles
3. Developing a culture of staff equality.
4. Putting Equality and Human Rights at the heart of improvement planning.
5. inviting staff to be partners in improvement and professional development.
6. Being person centred. Listening and responding to people.
7. Use external help. Success stories consistently features services reaching out for support and being prepared “to have a mirror shone on their work”.
8. Courage; positive risk taking, being honest and tackling difficult problems.
9. Continuous learning and curiosity. Learning from mistakes to improve care.
These nine success factors provide a useful framework for your journey towards an Outstanding rating.
Equally Outstanding provides some wonderful case study examples of enlightened care provider practice. These include the use of a ‘Sweet Readers’ project, which links young people with people living with dementia in care settings, also the inclusive development of vision, values and culture involving service users and staff. They make great reading and describe fantastic inspiring practice.
Take a look at the guide here:
http://www.cqc.org.uk/sites/default/files/20170913_equally_outstanding_ehr_resource_1.pdf
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Welcome to the Outstanding Care Consultancy Blog!
This month I was privileged to be interviewed by Sophie Coulthard for her podbean The Road to Outstanding.
I listened to a presentation by Sophie at the Care Show at the Birmingham NEC in October 2017 and we later got together to chat about our shared passion for outstanding care in the adult social care sector.
Sophie has run a previous series, talking with industry leads and inspiring care professionals. The podcasts are full of wonderful stories about making a positive difference to people’s lives, valuing people, promoting their voices and making their care truly person centred.
My interview is the first in her current series. We talk about how I came to set up Outstanding Care Consultancy and I reveal my Top Tips for an Outstanding Rating. You can listen soon from the link on our About page.
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