Easter egg decorating bridges generation gap
A cracking time was had by care home residents and school pupils during an Easter egg decorating session. The age-gap was bridged as both groups enjoyed painting, gluing and embellishing their eggs ahead of the annual holiday. Waverley Lodge Care Home, in Lemington, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, hosted the pupils from Lemington Riverside Primary School. The children, aged between seven and nine years old, regularly visit the care home to read and entertain the residents. Moira Hoole, who lives at the home, said: “The children are so lovely. They make the place come alive.” Pupil James Park said: “I love going to Waverley Lodge. The people are so nice. Moira asks me about school and if I’m being good. She’s just like another Nanna.” The children’s eggs were entered into a competition judged by the home’s senior carer Cheryl Smith, with the winners receiving a box of chocolates. Julie Booth, home manager at Waverley Lodge Care Home, on Bewick Crescent, said: “The children love coming to the care home and the residents thoroughly enjoy their company. “Intergenerational activities such as the Easter egg painting help bridge the age-gap and bring benefits to both groups. “The residents bring patience and experience to the activities while the children bring huge amounts of enthusiasm and energy.” Waverley Lodge Care Home is part of the Hill Care Group. For further information visit www.hillcare.net.
Get muddy with your mates and raise some money for LOROS Hospice
Introducing a new LOROS Hospice challenge this year ‘The Mudnificent 7’, the UK’s most popular mud and obstacle race. Devised by seven of the top obstacle race designers in the UK, their expertise has been utilised to create an exhilarating and challenging obstacle race that will really test your strength and stamina. The 7km course takes place at 12.30pm on 11th August, and requires participants to overcome physical and mental challenges. The course must be completed on foot and is likely to include mud and water, so expect to get dirty. Each 1km zone is unique and changes each year, so no two courses are the same. Hosted at the Heart of England Country Park in Coventry, LOROS Events Lead, Andrew Ward said: “I’m really looking forward to our team taking on The Mudnificent 7. It’s a great event with a real party atmosphere and anyone that joins us can really test their physical and mental ability. “As you need to work together to get past many of the obstacles, moral support will definitely be key to this challenge, so get your mates on-board and get muddy for LOROS Hospice.” David Roulston of Shepshed has been taking part in Mudnificent 7 events for three years now in memory of his friend Michael Smith of Sileby. “My life-long friend Michael was diagnosed with Motor Neuron Disease at just 33 years old. Following his devastating diagnosis, a bunch of friends and I decided to raise money in order to have his home adapted to make his life easier, that’s when we set-up the Michael Smith Trust Challenge Team. Following Michael’s terminal illness diagnosis, Dave spent some time with his friend at LOROS, who cared for Michael until he died. “From day one, LOROS was just incredible. I was shocked and amazed all at the same time when I stepped on to the ward. LOROS went above and beyond for Michael, making the end of his life as comfortable as they possibly could. The work they do is just brilliant,” said Dave. “I have been raising money for LOROS Hospice for the past year. So far, our team has managed to raise over £20,000 in Michael’s memory.” he added. With his first-hand experience of The Mudnificent 7, David says that it is a tough challenge to get through. “Mudnificent 7 is a real challenge for anyone that wants to take part. As a race, it’s by far one of my favourites, I love it. If you are thinking of signing up, you’ll do much better with some support to get through the different zones, so either bring your friends, or look out for the Michael Smith Trust Challenge Team and we’ll give you a hand. “ The minimum age limit is 16, and each finisher will receive a free t-shirt and medal as part of the event. Entry is £20 with an £80 sponsorship pledge. For more information and to book visit loros.co.uk/mud
A new approach to future care for FMs
Recent research suggests that the UK care sector needs some urgent attention, not just because of a rising population of older people, with the number of people living to 100 almost doubling since 2002, but also because there are louder calls for a whole new style of care in the future. In addition to needing more beds and care homes across the country, technological advancements and increasing customer expectations are shaking things up for the sector. These changes and challenges are demanding a new approach from those working in care. From our work in the sector, a particular challenge concerns reassessing the way buildings, and the assets contained within them, are managed and maintained. There appears to be an industry-wide recognition and appreciation that the design and management of the environment within a care home has an impact on the health and wellbeing of occupants. To that end, the efforts to ensure that a space is clean, safe, secure and comfortable are evident. However, the approach to maintenance doesn’t always mirror the energy of these other efforts. This is somewhat surprising as potentially catastrophic results are likely to arise if critical equipment fails due to inadequate maintenance. Yet asset performance is more often than not logged rather haphazardly, often via a convoluted Excel document, a paper-based system or sometimes even via a group messaging app! These are all fairly outdated approaches, particularly given the range of IT-based solutions available, but there seems to be hesitation to adopt the systems that can help care homes to streamline their maintenance processes. Every property needs to be maintained, but when you are responsible for the home of a vulnerable group of people, you have to go a step beyond the traditional parameters of maintenance. Compliance is essential; simply because you’re responsible for people’s lives. The health and wellbeing of these individuals hinges on the level of care that’s being offered, but also on the physical infrastructures in place. Care home managers must work with their facilities staff to make sure the environments match and exceed expectations, and cater to the needs of the residents. Implementing an effective, preventative and tech-assisted maintenance strategy can help in this pursuit. Such systems can record compliance, meaning you have the necessary documentation and data to hand should an incident happen. They can also monitor your third party maintenance service providers to ensure the agreed service levels are being met. In addition, these systems can help you track asset performance to understand why particular equipment might fail more often than others, and to gauge whether there’s a more cost effective, reliable alternative. In this modern age, swapping paper records for an online, cloud-based platform is the best way to ensure you collect and use the data available to make the right business decisions. This is called computer-aided facilities management (CAFM) software; a good CAFM system presents real-time data in easily digestible ways. From this you can see how many reactive and scheduled tasks are on the horizon, and you can monitor all aspects of your maintenance programme, from what you’re spending, to how assets and contractors are performing. As the number of care homes in the UK increases in the coming years, there’s an opportunity to rethink the approach to maintenance. Ideally, care home maintenance should be seamless, non-intrusive and virtually invisible to residents; CAFM systems can help with this. This tech-based approach to maintenance won’t only make your life easier, but it’ll also help you save costs, minimise disruption and improve standards of care. By Paul Djuric, CEO, Urgent Technology
Windsor care home celebrates ‘Outstanding’ rating from the CQC
A care home based in Windsor has been rated as ‘outstanding’ by the Care Quality Commission – CQC, following an inspection into the quality of service it provides. Sandown Park Care Home, which is part of the Healthcare Homes group, was inspected in January and has now received this highly positive grading. The CQC is the independent regulator of health and adult social care in England. It makes sure health and social care services provide people with safe, effective, compassionate and high-quality care. Inspectors visited Sandown Park in an unannounced visit and spent time speaking with staff, residents, the relatives of residents and the registered manager. They looked to determine whether the service delivered at the home was safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led. The home was rated as ‘outstanding’ in three of the five areas. The report found the level of care at the home to be outstanding and noted that staff “formed compassionate relationships with people and supported family members of people who were connected with Sandown Park Care Home.” It found a happy, positive environment at the home, stating, “We observed that people enjoyed starting conversations with staff and engaging with them. We saw people laughed and smiled when they were talking with staff. This demonstrated people had developed positive relationships with the staff team.” The home has been recognised for its exceptional attention to detail over interior and garden design, with inside and outside area based on innovative, creative themes to support and stimulate those living with dementia. The home was shortlisted for the 2017 National Dementia Care Awards and inspectors commented on these outstanding features of the home. They said “The service and the garden were demonstrated as having a positive effect on people’s physical, emotional and mental wellbeing.” The positive comments made within the report are also reflected on the independent care home review website www.carehome.co.uk where the home is currently rated as 9.3 out of 10. The daughter of a resident recently commented: “While my Mum was at Sandown Park the care team from beginning to end was outstanding. All staff [are] so loving and caring. Any problem we had was sorted straight away. They made us feel so loved.” Manager of Sandown Park Shahnaaz Mohamad said: “We couldn’t be more delighted to have been rated as outstanding by our industry inspectorate. “The whole team at Sandown Park works so hard to ensure that we are doing all we can to provide the best possible care for our residents, in the best possible environment. Our commitment to continuously finding new and creative ways to engage and stimulate our residents is evidence of this. We will never stop trying to improve our service, and will always welcome feedback from residents, relatives and inspectors at all times so that we can build on our good work.” The full CQC inspection report can be viewed at http://www.cqc.org.uk/location/1-1317205051. For more information on Sandown Park, call 01753 833 140 or visit www.healthcarehomes.co.uk. Sandown Park is based on Vale Road in Windsor and provides residential & nursing care for up to 80 residents, many of whom live with dementia.
A new bathing range designed to meet individual needs
Making sure you find the right bathroom equipment to suit the needs of your care home residents and staff can be a daunting task. However, two well-known faces in the sector have joined forces to create a new range of height adjustable and fixed height assisted baths for the care home market, which have been designed to meet the needs of each individual resident. With more than 60 years’ experience in design, manufacturing and customer service between them, Ray Metcalf and Dennis Goodes have launched a unique range of baths for the assisted bathing market. “I have enjoyed redesigning a range that specifically suits care homes, upgrading the mechanical parts and incorporating soft curves to protect delicate skin as well as being aesthetically pleasing,” explains Metcalf. “We both have the same enthusiasm now as we had 20 years ago,” he adds. The range includes a number of baths that are either height adjustable or fixed height in a unique ‘Art Deco’ style. Each one is built by hand in the UK using traditional methods to meet the highest standards and incorporating the latest ‘one touch’ technology. “We are proud of the fact that our baths are designed and made in the UK,” says Goodes. “We are also as proud of what’s underneath the bath as what’s on top. Our ‘fit and forget’ motto is the standard we build to.” Individually tested and dispatched direct to site and ready to go, trained teams are available to install, commission and service the baths throughout mainland UK. The baths are bespoke with numerous options that can be incorporated to suit individual needs and are built to order. “Our aim is to provide a top quality product at a really good price,” says Goodes. “I design to make other peoples’ lives better,” Ray Metcalf concludes. Ray Metcalf Dennis Goodes The Assisted Bathing Company Unit 736, Ampress Lane Lymington, Hampshire SO41 8LW T: (Sales) +44 (0)1590 647 479 T: (Technical) +44 (0)1590 647 478 F: +44 (0)1590 610 080 www.assistedbathing.com
Integrated Cloud Care Management Software
Every business grapples with decisions around the best system to manage its expanding operations. Proper planning of an integrated care management software system often takes a back seat to short-term revenue goals including occupancy, staffing or general firefighting. As a consequence often software applications are taken on and installed at different points in time in various functional areas, resulting in business process inefficiencies, integration and staff training challenges. Tackling these potential problems in the first place will avoid this. Business software to support processes such as billing, time & attendance, reporting, training and care planning can take the form of standalone applications from different vendors, home-grown applications, or a variety of spreadsheet workarounds. Operators who evolve their systems over time in this manner can find themselves with a poorly planned architecture that handles short-term needs while holding the companies efficiencies back over the long term. This tangled web of business software systems constrains flexibility, output, and slows down the company’s processes ultimately wasting employee productivity. Employees bogged down with inefficient and disjointed processes will increases errors and take time away from their more important duties such as care provision. Important processes such as payroll administration, invoicing, occupancy management , training records and care planning can take a lot longer to complete and are often incorrect. For example an employee may be spend hours manually entering onto staff timesheets or Service User billing into the accounting and invoicing system, while other employees put that same information into your payroll package and occupancy reporting tool. Should any of this information prove to be incorrect during the process then employees are then forced to sift through heaps of data to reconcile again. These labour intensive tasks will add to administrative staff costs and prevent key management and financial information being available in the appropriate timeframe. The upshot in the lack of real-time visibility when software systems and manual tasks overlap will result in management and stakeholders not getting a view of business performance in a timely fashion. Consequently, businesses either end up making critical decisions slowly, based on inaccurate information, or they make hasty and risky decisions by gut instinct. Reports showing performance across your staffing, finance, service user and care departments are crucial to giving you an all-inclusive view of your company’s operations. Real-time visibility is important in making timely informed decisions. When information can be accessed instantly without wasting resources on data extraction and tying data from different sources together, management are better informed to enable accurate, faster decisions. Integrated care management systems such as Fusion contain all of these functions in one application. http://www.fusion4care.com
Care Roadshows prepares for its return to Glasgow
Despite the cold weather, things are hotting up for the return of Care Roadshow Glasgow to Hampden Park Stadium on Tuesday 17th April. This will be the eighth year that Care Roadshows has graced Scottish soil with its free informative event that is tailored to the care workers in the region. As previous years have proved, the free CPD seminars, workshops and networking opportunities offer a valuable day out for all those who attend. The morning will be kick started at 10am with the first of two interactive workshop hosted by Oomph! ‘Leading a “Full life for life” and an intro to Wellbeing’. Margaret McKeith from Scottish Care will be hosting her seminar ‘Integrate, Innovate, Imitate – sharing good practice within the Independent Care sector’ shortly after the workshop. These are free to attend so no booking in advance is required. We just ask that you take your seats in plenty of time before the seminar begins. Headline sponsors Quality Compliance Systems will also be on hand to offer support and advice during their seminar and on stand 28. The Royal College of Nursing along with Care Inspectorate will be speaking throughout the day too. Henry Mathias from Care Inspectorate will speak about how the new Standards differ from previous versions and what they mean for health and social care provision. This will include how the Care Inspectorate will take the Standards into account when inspecting care services. Running alongside the seminars and workshops at the Care Roadshows is a selected range of exhibitors who can offer one to one support including Disclosure Scotland, South Beach Holdings and Zuri to name a few. To register for your free tickets, please visit the website www.careroadshows.co.uk or alternatively you can call 01425 838393. We looking forward to welcoming you next month.
Cramond Residence Information Suite Now Open
Information Suite Now Open at Edinburgh’s Finest Care Home. Edinburgh’s newest luxury care home has officially launched its Information Suite which is now open to locals across the city for an exclusive first look tour. The much-anticipated Cramond Residence is welcoming guests to its beautifully-designed suite to showcase the high quality of accommodation and facilities that will be available when it opens later this year. The Information Suite comprises a sample bedroom, complete with en-suite shower room, and sample lounge layout, giving visitors the chance to experience the distinctly homely feel of the Residence first-hand. Eileen Gray, General Manager, said: “We are very excited to have officially unveiled our luxurious Information Suite. “Cramond Residence is set to be somewhere people can really enjoy their later years and has been specially designed to offer the highest quality of living and personalised care in elegant and comfortable surroundings. “Now that the Suite is open, we would encourage anyone interested to drop by and take a short tour to find out more about all the fantastic facilities that the Residence will offer when we open our doors later this year.” The Information Suite at Cramond Residence is located at 49 Cramond Road North, Edinburgh, EH4 6NQ. Private appointments can be arranged by phoning Dorothy Brown, Client Relationship Manager, on 07971 992 843. Managed exclusively by Walker Healthcare, Cramond Residence has been designed to promote small community living. It comprises nine distinct houses, each with its own identity and selection of generous en-suite rooms, lounges, quiet spaces, dining areas and activity spaces. For more information visit www.cramondresidence.co.uk
Complete Temperature Management for Cold and Ambient Pharmaceutical Storage
QED Scientific +2°C to +8°C Pharmacy and Vaccine Fridges are designed for safe and secure storage of all pharmaceuticals as advised in ‘Protocol for Ordering, Storing and Handling Vaccines by Public Health England’. These are compliant with all guidelines including the DoH Green Book as well as being ideal for hospitals these are also suitable for use in clinics, care homes, schools, veterinary surgeries – or anywhere needing refrigerated storage of drugs. They come in a range of sizes from under bench and wall models up to free standing floor units. Many have solid or glass door options. All have digital display, fan, and auto defrost as standard. NEW! ‘Store below 25°C’ Medicine Storage Cabinets For medicines that are not normally stored in a fridge manufacturers generally guarantee that they remain stable if stored below 25 degrees Celsius (25°C). In a heatwave, ambient temperatures may rise above this. To protect these medicines, QED Scientific now supplies a range of CRT ‘controlled room temperature’ cabinets that operate between +15°C +25°C. These cabinets offer an ideal cost-effective solution for departments that don’t want the expense of air conditioning, yet struggle to maintain recommended storage temperature for non-refrigerated medicines. They come in a wide range of capacities from under bench right up to free-standing larger models and are ideally suited for i.e. clinical studies, care homes, GP surgeries and hospitals. Features Both QED Pharmacy refrigerators and CRT cabinets are lockable and automatically alarm if the temperature goes out of range, plus store min/max values of measured temperature. Options include digital door locks and data storage for download to your PC. QED Scientific Ltd, Unit 21 Botany Business Park, Whaley Bridge, High Peak, SK23 7DQ. Telephone: 01663-735494 Email: medtemp@qedscientific.com http://www.qedscientific.com
