So proud of #teamenable for their commitment to the people they are supporting over Christmas and New Year. Especially to those offering to work on the days they would have normally been off, due to a change in the circumstances with an individual’s unpaid care.
The above scenario is not an unusual one within Health and Social care, but at this time of year, it is so important to recognise the wonderful people that choose to spend the festive time supporting those who need it as well as and sometimes instead of with their own families.
From all at Enable – Thank you and Merry Christmas
World Diabetes Day (WDD) was created in 1991 by IDF and the World Health Organisation in response to growing concerns about the escalating health threat posed by diabetes. World Diabetes Day became an official United Nations Day in 2006 with the passage of United Nation Resolution 61/225. It is marked every year on 14 November, the birthday of Sir Frederick Banting, who co-discovered insulin along with Charles Best in 1922.
WDD is the world’s largest diabetes awareness campaign reaching a global audience of over 1 billion people in more than 160 countries. The campaign draws attention to issues of paramount importance to the diabetes world and keeps diabetes firmly in the public and political spotlight.
The World Diabetes Day campaign aims to be the:
The campaign is represented by a blue circle logo that was adopted in 2007 after the passage of the UN Resolution on diabetes. The blue circle is the global symbol for diabetes awareness. It signifies the unity of the global diabetes community in response to the diabetes epidemic.
Every year, the World Diabetes Day campaign focuses on a dedicated theme that runs for one or more years. The theme for World Diabetes Day 2019 is Family and Diabetes.
Firework safety tips:
Only buy fireworks marked with the British Standard Kitemark BS7114
Don’t drink alcohol if you’re setting off fireworks
Keep fireworks in a closed box and always follow the instructions carefully when using them
Light them at arms length using a taper and stand well back
Never go back to them once they are lit. Even if a firework hasn’t gone off, it could still explode
Never throw fireworks, and never put them in your pocket
Respect your neighbours – don’t let off fireworks late at night and remember there are laws to follow
Take care with sparklers – never give them to children under five. Even when they’ve gone out they’re still hot, so put sparklers in a bucket of water after use
Keep your pets indoors throughout the evening.
Bonfire safety tips:
Build your bonfire well clear of buildings, garden sheds, fences and hedges
Never use flammable liquids to start a bonfire, and never burn dangerous items such as aerosol cans, paint tins, foam furniture, or batteries
Don’t leave bonfires unattended. An adult should supervise it until it has burnt out. If it has to be left, damp it down with plenty of water
Always keep a bucket of water or a hosepipe nearby in case of fire
Check the weather – avoid lighting bonfires in high winds.
Top Gear presenter Paddy McGuinness has spoken about the anger he felt after a stranger questioned why he had parked in a space reserved for the disabled.
The TV star, whose six-year-old twins Leo and Penelope have autism, said he was dropping his children off at a play centre when the man approached.
McGuinness admitted wanting to “bounce [him] off every car” but instead opted to “handle the situation calmly”.
“I tried to explain to him that not all disabilities are the same,” he tweeted.
“The ignorance and sheer pomposity of telling someone they don’t look disabled really makes my blood boil,” he continued.
“If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, stay calm, take the deep breath and educate the ignorant,” he wrote.
McGuinness and his wife Christine revealed their twins have autism in 2017. They also have a three-year-old daughter, Felicity, who was born in 2016.
Last year the Take Me Out host revealed he and Christine had finally managed to have a family holiday for the first time in four-and-a-half years.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast on Monday, Christine McGuinness revealed she faced situations like the one her husband wrote about “every weekend”.
“I try and educate people as much as I can,” she said. “I’ll take any opportunity to tell people about autism, because it’s the only way we can help people understand.”
Mrs McGuinness said it felt “awful” to have to explain the nature of her children’s disability and that it was “difficult enough” without having to deal with situations like the one her husband described.
“I would expect adults to understand a little bit more,” she went on, calling for people to be “a little bit more kind and polite”.
The National Autistic Society said the incident McGuinness described was “another example of how far we have to go before autistic people are understood and accepted in society”.
“Only 16% of autistic ppl [people] feel the public understand them in a meaningful way,” they tweeted after McGuinness, an ambassador for the charity, made his experiences public.
As we all know, when it comes to property investing, it’s all about Location, Location and Location. Similarly for Care Providers, it’s Evidence, Evidence and more Evidence.
Most inspections involve evidence-gathering based on incidents. Speaking to an inspector, I was told “if it isn’t written down then it never happened”. That’s the stark reality of running a care agency today.
Every action or inaction on the part of your support workers needs to be justified: What did they do? When did they do it? Where did they do it? How and Why? And all of this needs to be documented.
Without Evidence of the above, Care Providers are at far greater risk of being fined or being found guilty of negligence, gross misconduct or even corporate manslaughter.
Gathering all the evidence you need to protect your agency, your support workers and your service users may sound like an impossible task but it doesn’t have to be. Digital technology exists and is being utilised by many providers of care. Technology helps to easily and comprehensively log, store and access or retrieve all the evidence you need.
If you’re not quite convinced of the power of going digital, of switching from manual care notes to electronic notes, consider the following:
Fluid Intake, ABC data, Safeguarding, Bristol stool data and the list goes on; your support workers have a lot to write up during a single visit. How much time does that take away from the provision of care on each visit? 10 minutes? More?
With electronic notes, the time spent writing all of this up can be drastically reduced. With the CareSuccess mobile app, checklists for tasks considerably speed things up with voice-to-text functionality adding that vital layer of detail as all your support worker needs to do to make their notes is click and talk.
Whether its the CQC or Social Services, dealing with demands to see evidence of a Service User incident can be time consuming and stressful. This is especially true if you have boxes of paperwork to wade through. With logbooks stored in Service Users’ homes, your Care Managers may not even be up to date on the current status of a Service User, let alone have easy access to vital notes. This situation is confounded by the illegibility of hurriedly written care notes as your Support Workers struggle to stay on schedule for the day.
Electronic notes can be accessed anywhere, anytime. With the CareSuccess management portal, all your Care Manager needs to do is tap in a quick search query over any given date range for a specific Service User or Support Worker to access the required notes or crucial evidence.
Day-to-day, your Care Managers can also see up to the minute reports as the moment a Support Worker completes their electronic care notes for a visit, these notes are synced with the CareSuccess management app. In addition, our red-amber-green (RAG or traffic light) alert system enables support works to clearly flag any issues they had on a visit so your Care Managers can quickly see whether or not they need to intervene.
How often do you deal with calls from family members who believe their loved one, your Service User, has not received the care they need? Perhaps they claim personal hygiene tasks weren’t completed or medication not administered.
With handwritten care notes stored at a Service User’s home, you haven’t got easy access to the information you need to provide them with an immediate, definitive response. You’ll now need to make time to go get those notes, rummage through them and find what you’re looking for, though you may still come up empty if your support worker hasn’t documented all of their tasks.
Electronic notes don’t just give your care managers instant access to Evidence of completed tasks but with the CareSuccess management portal,every time your Support Workers log that they have completed a task, the task is timestamped. Add to that GPS tracking and you’ll have convincing proof to show Service Users’ family members of where and when a task was completed.
What’s more, as each task a Service User needs is built into their profile on the CareSuccess mobile app, if a support worker tries to log their completed notes having not ticked off a required task, they’ll be alerted to their oversight and won’t be able to submit their notes until this is resolved.
The madatory requirement for an ECMS is achieved through our applications.
When it comes around to monthly audits, from spot checks and shadowing to mandatory training and hand wash audits, evidence once again comes into play. The CQC want to see what you’ve done and when you did it. As before, rifling through countless folders to dig out your proof is time-consuming. Electronic notes via the CareSuccess mobile app enables you to quickly log and easily access your audits. The same goes for evidence of complaints, compliments and suggestions.
CareSuccess enables you to do away with mountains of paperwork by providing user-friendly digital apps that make creating, storing and accessing evidence easy for everyone, whether you’re tech-savvy or not.
Here is some of the functionality you can look forward to with CareSuccess:
There’s more to gain with CareSuccess’ state of the art care technology. Every feature and function is designed to take away the stress that comes with the constant demand for evidence. With our suite of care apps, evidence is easy to log and easy to access, leaving you to focus on providing excellent care.
For more information about how CareSuccess can help your agency thrive, get in touch with me, Harry Jashvir, here or drop me a line at info@caresuccess.io
Best wishes to everyone on the occasion of Diwali. May this festival of light bring new light in your life, illuminating you with happiness, prosperity and good luck #teamenable
Today is World Menopause Day. Acas has published new guidance to help employers and managers support staff who are affected by menopause symptoms at work.
Read Acas Menopause at Work guidance
Around two million women have difficulties at work due to their menopause symptoms and it’s estimated that one in 20 could go through an early menopause.
Our new advice includes tips for workers on how to raise the issue and good practice guidance for employers to help offer support and better manage menopause at work.
Acas Senior Adviser, Michele Piertney, talks about ‘Breaking the silence on the menopause’ in her new blog.
Acas training: We’ve also launched a new training course for managers and employers to help them understand the issues and create supportive workplaces:
Find a training event scheduled near you
If you have a larger group to train you can enquire about delivering this training at your workplace via our online enquiry form
Acas conferences:
12 November 2019, Exeter. Acas Strategic Planning and Performance Director, Kate Nowicki, will talk about Menopause and the workplace at Acas South West’s Annual Seminar on 12 November. Find out more or book your place
29 November 2019, Mold. Louise Moore Acas Trainer/Adviser will run a session on providing a clear understanding of the menopause, the common misconceptions and the legal position at the upcoming Acas Wales conference. Find out more or book your place
Enable are extremely proud to be supporting ‘Help the Homeless Leicester’. Their new 2020 initiative encourages local business to support their work. A registration fee and commitment to a monthly donation of £1 per day will help tackle homelessness in Leicester in a structured and focused way. We would encourage other local businesses to support this fantastic charity. #teamenable
On Sunday 13 October, Leicester’s world-famous Diwali switch-on was attended by tens of thousands people, making it the biggest Diwali celebration outside India.
A full stage show dazzled the crowds with music and dance performances, to get everyone into the spirit of the occasion. The Wheel Of Light returned too to give you the best view of the Golden Mile.
There’s so much still to look forward too! There will be a wider programme of city events over the fortnight including creative workshops, temple visits, live performances, fashion shows and exhibitions. Ending in our Diwali Day celebrations on Sunday 27 October.
Full details are available at visitleicester.info.
A Diwali 2019 guide will soon be available from the Visit Leicester centre in Gallowtree Gate, as well as our customer service centre, libraries, shops and cafes. Get social for Diwali.
Monthly column for providers and professionals working in adult social care from Kate Terroni, Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care.
The change in weather in September is a reminder to us all to ensure that we’re as ready as we can be for winter, including continued involvement in your local communities and health systems with winter planning and ensuring all staff who are eligible have had their flu jab.
In previous columns I have talked about innovation and technology, and how technology can enhance people’s lives when used in the right way. In this month’s column I would like to share with you some of my more in-depth thoughts on the topic.
Since joining CQC I have been shadowing inspections as often as I can and recently I have seen more and more providers using electronic care plans. This means that their care staff have all of the information they need to deliver safe, effective, person-centred care at the touch of a button. Speaking with carers I have found that this technology means they can spend more time with the people they support and less time doing paperwork — a welcome benefit of technology. Providers have also told me about their frustrations with the way some inspectors use electronic care plans during inspections. In response to this, we are planning to co-produce with providers and inspectors, a short piece of guidance on how inspectors should use electronic care plans during inspections, which we hope to publish it early next year.
Speaking with carers I have found that this technology means they can spend more time with the people they support and less time doing paperwork.
In June we published the latest resource in our Driving Improvement series, which looks at a number of case studies where providers have used technology to improve the quality of life for the people they care for. The resource shines a light on examples where technology is being used to provide solutions to the problems facing the health and social care sector. I hope to continue to build on the success of the Driving Improvement series and include more examples of technology being used in new and innovative ways in adult social care. Please share with us in the comments below what you are doing and how it is improving outcomes for the people you support.
Innovation is not just about using technology though, and many providers are trying new ways of working to provide more efficient care. We are all operating in a time of uncertainty and financial limitations, requiring us to be creative and forward thinking in order to adapt to the changing environment, whether that be creating a new way of writing care plans to collaborating with your local partners in health and the voluntary sector to deliver more joined up care. As our social care providers develop new ways to deliver care, we at CQC are very keen that we do not stifle this innovation, as long as things are tried in collaboration with people who receive care and are safe.
There are also many businesses — and people — in the sector that are providing care or assistance in innovative ways that do not fall in CQC’s regulatory scope. For example, there are companies who help personal assistants link up with people who have care and support needs. We are interested in working with some of these companies to consider what, if any, regulation should be in place for the services they offer. If you provide such care and are interested in shaping our thinking about regulation of these ‘matching agencies’ please comment below so that we can get in touch with you.
Innovation is not just about using technology though, and many providers are trying new ways of working to provide more efficient care.
I have always found that coproduction is an excellent way to innovate, as often people with lived experience, their carers and providers have a different way at looking at the issue we’re trying to resolve. This month I co-chaired my second coproduction meeting at CQC — alongside Karolina Gerlich, CEO of the National Association of Care and Support Workers — which was an excellent day. Seeing people from so many different parts of the sector coming together to discuss projects that we’re working on at CQC and share their views is one of my favourite parts of the job. Getting the views of public and provider representatives is crucial to the work we do at CQC, and I’m sure we will be talking to your more about innovation and technology soon.
I hope that the next month treats you well and I look forward to writing to you in October about what the autumn has brought so far.