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Can you Dance for Dignity?
The Dignity in Care network is about putting Dignity at the heart of everything we do.
We have over 86,000 Dignity Champions, who I am sure really do believe in promoting Dignity for everyone as a human right. Dignity Champions are committed to making a positive difference. They have always had access to free resources, e.g. audits, posters, training aids, newsletter all helpful in spreading the word about the importance of Dignity.
My colleagues at the National Dignity Council and I work tirelessly to access funding to get these resources to our Champions and to make sure our website provides the information our Champions need.
We want to keep this campaign alive, to continue to provide all the resources (and more) but to do this we need funds.
Sponsored Dignity Danceathon
We are asking Champions to think about holding a fund raising activity for Dignity during the month of October, with the following focus:-
This is a chance for everyone no matter what age, ability or skill to have a go. We are inviting you to hold a Sponsored Dignity Danceathon. What are your ideas? How many people can you get together – how long collectively can they all dance for? Whether it’s a wiggle in a wheelchair, a fidget on a frame, a kick from the stick or full routine to a genre of music, what can you do?
Please think about this and share your ideas on our discussion forum.
Sponsorship packages will be available on the website by the end of the month.
I commit to finding a group of friends to relay dance with me for a 24 hour period.
Jan Burns MBE
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The National Dignity Council members update
The National Dignity Council members are actively involved in a number of areas promoting the Dignity Campaign:
Quality Matters will be launched on 12th July, Jackie Doyle-Price has been appointed as Under Secretary of State for Health for Care and Mental Health, and will be attending the event.
My Home Life (MHL) is a UK-wide initiative that promotes quality of life and delivers positive change in care homes for older people. It is based on a vision for best practice that is evidence-based and relationship-centred. My Home Life in England is led by City University London in partnership with Age UK.
Staffordshire Dignity Awards - In June our Chair Jan Burns, took on the role of panel member, judging the Staffordshire awards. She reports it was extremely heart-warming to read of excellent examples where dignity champions have gone the extra mile to selflessly, make a difference to people’s lives.
Suffolk Care Awards - Liz Taylor and Jane Finnerty also participated in the judging panels for the Suffolk Care Awards, which include a specific award for dignity and respect, but which has also made dignity an integral theme in all ten of the awards. Like Jan, Liz and Jane found it very humbling to read about some of the amazing practice that is taking place to improve the quality of life for those who need support.
The Council continues to be represented on CQC – Co-production meetings, with Jan flying the flag for Dignity.
Whilst on the subject of CQC, just a quick reminder that CQC have simplified their assessment frameworks, to help providers, so there is now only one framework for adult care and another for healthcare services. The wording in the Key Lines Of Enquiry has also been aligned with the new frameworks. CQC have also changed the Guidance for Providers section of their website to make it easier to use.
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News and information from our colleagues
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SCIE Co-production Week
SCIE's second annual Co-production Week July highlights the contribution of people who use services and carers to developing better public services.
They want organisations and people to make a Co-production Commitment, promising to do at least one thing to support co-production.
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Buckinghamshire Healthwatch have a Dignity in Care project
You can find out more through their dignity in care pages on their website. This links to pages about the aims of the project, access to individual reports on care homes (where the public can also leave their feedback on any home or other care or health provider), to Dignity annual reports for 2016 and the one just released for 2017.
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Very Advanced Notice - Dignity Action Day 2018 will be on the 1st February
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Care and Support Jargon Buster
Think Local Act Personal has produced a Care and Support Jargon Buster. This is a plain English guide to the most commonly used health and social care words and phrases, and what they mean.
You can also add your own jargon by emailing info@tlap.org.uk.
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NHS Safeguarding Guide app
The content of this app was originally developed by NHS Midlands and East SHA and further updated and developed by a consortium of CCG Safeguarding leads in the East.
The app is supported by NHS Safeguarding leads as suitable for all healthcare staff in England.
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The National Association of Care Catering (NACC)
The National Association of Care Catering (NACC) has launched a new guidance document to support its members and the care sector – How to provide good nutritional care and comply with CQC’s fundamental standards.
Focusing on the absolute importance of good nutrition and hydration as a central part of quality care, the document provides advice and information that will enable regulated residential and social care providers to give excellent nutritional care and meet the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) Fundamental Standards, concentrating on the Key Line of Enquiry (KLOE), ‘How are people supported to drink and eat enough and maintain a balanced diet?’. Using the guidance, care providers and caterers will be supported in understanding and driving forward improvements in nutritional care to help them achieve good or outstanding CQC ratings for their service and service users. The NACC’s guidance also provides a practical resource for care services that are not covered by England’s regulatory framework.
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What a Difference Good Care Makes
Scottish Care have recently launched the film What a Difference Good Care Makes
Directed by Michael Rea, the film features people in receipt of care services and their families, as well as those providing the care.
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STOMP
The social care sector is joining together to stop the over-medication of people with a learning disability or autism who use care services in England.
The campaign, supported by NHS England, is today encouraging all learning disability providers to sign up to a new pledge called STOMP (or Stopping the Over-Medication of People with a learning disability, autism or both). This campaign is badly needed. Public Health England estimates that every day between 30,000-35,000 people with a learning disability are taking prescribed antipsychotic or antidepressant medication, or both, without appropriate clinical justification. This means that for some people medication is being used as a means of controlling “problem” behaviour, even when alternative evidence-based approaches are available. Long-term use of these medicines can lead to significant weight gain, organ failure and, in some cases, death.
Successfully tackling over-medication is possible when prescribers, commissioners and providers collaborate to achieve positive change. Today, all social care provider organisations supporting people with a learning disability or autism in England are invited to play their part by registering their commitment to:
- Adopting positive behavioural approaches as an alternative to medication
- Advocating for people with a learning disability or autism by ensuring that they, and their family members, are involved in decisions about their medication and that these decisions are reviewed regularly
Follow the conversation on Twitter #STOMP
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Supporting Working Carers
TLAP has launched a Supporting Working Carers report, and accompanying Top Tips, which coincided with Carers Week.
The report aimed at employers, highlights the business case for supporting working carers, and gives practical suggestions which employers can put in place to make sure employees are well supported.
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Personalised playlists
A growing number of care homes are creating personalised music playlists, after research showed that people with dementia who listened the music tailored to their tastes and memories, needed less ant-anxiety and anti-psychotic medication.
Brown University USA worked with 98 care homes, and trained care workers in the Music and Memory programme. Residents’ mood, behaviour and their use of medication were recorded at the beginning and end of the study, with care homes reporting improvements in behaviour and reduction in the use of medication.
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CMM film to support better health for people with learning disabilities
The film seeks to raise awareness about the importance of health checks for people with learning disabilities.
The film follows on from recent work and resources to support better health for people with learning disabilities. NDTi produces the Health Equality Framework which is a freely available outcome based tool to help commissioners, providers, people with learning disabilities and their families understand the impact and effectiveness of health and social care services.
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Good Decision Making
NCPC have published the new edition of “Good Decision Making – what you need to know about the Mental Capacity Act and end of life care”.
The guide has been revised to include a new section with information about DOLS, and can be purchased from NCPC.
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App to assess how suitable a home is for someone with dementia
Stirling University are developing an app that will assess how suitable a home is for someone with dementia. The app will also recommend changes that could be made to the building to make it more suitable. The app would assess a two bed-roomed house in around 20 mins, using a combination of questions and photographs.
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Social Isolation and Loneliness in the UK
Loneliness and social isolation are complex conditions which have remained relatively under-researched until recently. Where research has been conducted, it has almost exclusively focused on the prevalence of the conditions on older demographics, and has largely ignored the development of the conditions amongst younger people.
However, both social isolation and loneliness are starting to receive increased attention from local authorities, health and social care providers and third-sector organisations due to growing evidence around the negative impacts they have on health and wellbeing. Research has shown that, in terms of negative health outcomes, lacking social connections is comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and has worse health outcomes than risk factors such as obesity and physical inactivity. It has been calculated that loneliness increases the likelihood of mortality by 26% in older people.
This report aims to provide an overview of the social isolation and loneliness landscape in the UK, taking into account the factors that contribute to the development of the conditions, those who are commonly affected, the impacts of the conditions on individuals and public services, and the approaches and interventions that are currently used to address them. In particular, this report seeks to highlight the innovative uses of technology in addressing loneliness and isolation, as these are expected to act as key enablers in the future.
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Choose an Apprenticeship
The National Skills Academy and Skills for Health have developed the Choose an Apprenticeship video as a recruitment resource for employers, schools and colleges. Please take a look and share so we can encourage more people to choose an apprenticeship.
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Improving personalisation in care homes - Action planning tool
This action planning tool is for managers and owners of care homes for older people. It will help you to:
- Build a shared understanding of what personalisation (or person-centred care) means in a care home setting
- Identify and plan practical improvements that will make your home more personalised
It has been designed to also be used for wider groups of people including those with complex conditions. Care home managers will be able to use the tool to support good conversations with residents and staff, and identify the improvements that will make the most difference to people’s quality of life.
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Elderly face ‘Russian roulette’ of understaffed nursing homes
One in three nursing homes is inadequate, condemning tens of thousands of elderly people to substandard care, an overview of inspections has found. Elderly…
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The Dignity in Care Campaign
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Keep up the campaign, we must make a difference
The National Dignity Council asks where are all the Dignity Champions who have signed up to campaign and promote Dignity? Do they exist? Do they have a voice? So many reasons for understaffing with massive implications. Dignity underpins all Quality practice. Those hard working, committed staff should be congratulated - keep up the campaign we must make a difference.
Don’t feel able to commit to the Danceathon that doesn’t mean that you can’t raise funds for Dignity, below are just a few suggestions you might like to consider instead.
Dignity remains an important issue for us to address. Over time it has started to move higher up people’s agenda, but our website, which is a key source of information and support for champions, is not funded and in order to keep it up to date we do need funds.
This could be:
- Having a ramble around your local park, or even the garden, and being sponsored for that.
- Organising a sponsored ‘tea dance’
- Having a sponsored ‘knit and natter’.
In fact anything that gives everyone the opportunity to get involved in doing something that would raise funds to enable this important campaign to continue.
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Dignity Audits
The National Dignity Council is now able to offer Dignity Audits to organisations. These will be based on our current downloadable audits, but will be independent.
The cost of the audit will be £1,000. This will include, a day on site conducting the audit, any expenses associated with attendance on site, and a full report. If you are interested in taking up this offer please contact us at info@dignityincare.org.uk
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Badges
Unfortunately following increases in costs to us and postage, it has become necessary to raise the price of individual badges and wristbands.
Badges will now be £2 and Wristbands will be £1. We are really sorry that we have had to make these changes but we do not receive any funds to subsidise the badges.
The increases will take place for all orders received with a postmark or email date after 15th July 2017. If you require more than five badges please continue to send an email for a quote. info@dignityincare.org.uk
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We are very pleased to announce our new and improved website
The Dignity in Care website was originally set up in 2008 by the Department of Health to support a few thousand champions, due to the success of the campaign, to promote access to dignity as a human right, we now have well over 86,000 champions. This has resulted in us reviewing the website to make it even more user friendly and accessible. We are really pleased to say that some of those crucial changes have now been made, so do visit the website, you will see it looks a little different. We are sure you will find the updates useful, particularly the following areas:-
We still have some work to do and this will continue to make sure the resources on the site are up to date and useful.
A very big thank you to all champions for your continued support and we encourage you to invite others to join us in our campaign – together we can make a real difference.
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