Balhousie Care Group raises over £34,800 for Alzheimer Scotland
Balhousie Care Group, with 25 care homes across the North East of Scotland, has successfully raised £34,891.29 for their chosen charity partner, Alzheimer Scotland. Alzheimer Scotland was announced as charity partner in December 2016 after conducting a staff poll. The charity is very close to hearts of staff at Balhousie Care Group, with around 800 Balhousie care group residents living with dementia or cognitive decline. As part of their 25th Anniversary year, the group aimed to raise £25,000 for the charity, with each of the group’s 25 homes tasked with raising £1,000. Staff, residents and relatives met this challenge head on, and smashed through the original target with some wild and wacky fundraising, including zip wires, 24-hour cycles and staff and resident sponsored walks. The partnership with Alzheimer Scotland has also provided Balhousie’s homes with resources for staff training, resident wellbeing and relative support. Balhousie Care Group has developed a dementia strategy which focuses on individuals and encourages consultation and input from residents, staff, families and visiting professionals. Its Dementia Ambassadors programme supports designated care home staff with an interest in dementia with regular meetings and speakers on the subject. Steve White, CEO of Balhousie Care Group welcomed Linda Thomson, Corporate Fundraiser for Alzheimer Scotland to North Inch House Care Home, Perth to hand over the funds. “We’re absolutely delighted with the results of this year’s partnership with Balhousie Care Group,” said Linda. “It’s been very rewarding to support the innovative work that Balhousie are implementing through their Dementia Strategy and their amazing Dementia Ambassadors. We rely on donations such as those received from Balhousie Care Group to help us sustain vital services like our Dementia Advisors, Dementia Helpline, Dementia Nurses and Dementia Resource Centres. We are very grateful that Alzheimer Scotland will benefit from the impressive sum raised by Balhousie’s dedicated staff which will go a long way towards helping us fulfil our aim of making sure no-one goes through dementia on their own.” Steve White, CEO of Balhousie Care Group, said: “The charity partnership with Alzheimer Scotland has given us all a fantastic opportunity to increase our knowledge about dementia across the entire organisation, enabling us to help raise awareness as well as funds. We’re incredibly proud of our dedicated and enthusiastic staff, they really embraced the challenge and we’re delighted that the total raised reflects their efforts throughout the year. “ During Dementia Awareness Week, Antiquary care home in Arbroath held a sponsored cycle and raised over £450, Perth’s North Inch and North Grove homes raised over £400 at their Summer Fayre and Lisden in Kirriemuir raised over £550 from their purple party and car boot sale. Balhousie Care Group head office also raised £150 during their bake day. Exceeding the original goal for its annual charity partnership rounds off a hugely successful year for Balhousie Care Group, in which the company has celebrated its 25th birthday, numerous industry awards, and two of its care homes achieving the highest Care Inspectorate ratings possible. To find out more about Balhousie Care Group visit balhousiecare.co.uk. For more on Alzheimer Scotland see the website.
It’s In Your Hands – preventing sepsis in healthcare by promoting hand hygiene
May 5th – World Hand Hygiene Day This week the WHO’s SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands campaign takes place globally. The event hopes to spread awareness among healthcare workers of how to prevent infectious diseases – including sepsis – by carrying out rigorous hand hygiene routines. Shockingly, 70% of the world’s health care workers and 50% of surgical teams do not routinely practice hand hygiene, say the WHO. This year’s slogan is “It’s in your hands – prevent sepsis in healthcare” and a raft of nurses and other healthcare workers have committed to organising displays, running hand hygiene classes and ensuring current practice meets the best standards possible. Launched in 2005, the WHO’s Clean Care is Safer Care programme is aimed at reducing healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) worldwide and the Save Lives: Clean Your Hands campaign is part of their ongoing commitment to reduce needless deaths. The WHO website states: “SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands was deemed a natural next phase of the Clean Care is Safer Care programme, moving the call to action from a country pledge of commitment to the point of patient care. The central core of SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands is that all health-care workers should clean their hands at the right time and in the right way. “SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands incorporates a global annual day to focus on the importance of improving hand hygiene in health care with WHO providing support for these efforts. “A suite of hand hygiene improvement tools and materials have been created from a base of existing research and evidence and from rigorous testing, as well as working closely with a range of experts in the field. The tools aim to help the translation into practice of a multimodal strategy for improving and sustaining hand hygiene in health care.” The SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands objectives are: 1. Aim to make hand hygiene a global priority, viewed as an essential life-saving action in the delivery of safe, quality care. 2. Make meaningful engagement with all health workers (and others) on hand hygiene and emphasize how their role plays a part in improving patient outcomes. 3. Inspire infection prevention and hand hygiene advocates in a range of clinical settings to support sustained behaviour change, aligning with the campaign call to action. 4. Ensure hand hygiene campaign recognition through continuity with a ‘SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands’ activity each year – driving on-going engagement with the use of campaign resources available on WHO webpages. Dr Edward Kelley, the WHO’s director of service delivery and safety, said, “Health care-associated infection is such a big problem, we need to focus the world on something that is truly actionable and can save many, many lives. This action is hand hygiene, a flagship element of WHO’s patient safety work.” On Twitter, use the hashtag #handhygiene and #sepsis to post your events and team photos. For more information on World Hand Hygiene Day, see who.int
Care & Nursing Essentials’ Naidex 2018 highlights
Naidex 2018 – Europe’s largest and most established event for the disability sector – took place alongside the Dementia Care & Nursing Home Expo at Birmingham’s NEC last week. Our editor Victoria Galligan went along to meet exhibitors, are here are some of her highlights: • Watching the SANO stairclimber take a wheelchair backwards up four stairs was truly remarkable – for people who have steps out onto the street or are unable to fit a ramp, this piece of tech is ideal. The SANO reps told me some supermarkets have invested in stairclimbers as part of their emergency evacuation plans. See more here. • I met Corien and Laura from wheelAIR – Staels Design – who feature in our sister magazine UCan2. Their wheelchair cooling system is truly amazing, allowing users to keep cool when exercising in particular – which can be problematic for sports players. See our article on wheelAIR here. • After we backed the #ChangingPlaces campaign, it was great to chat to Tom told about Radar Key and how the £2.50 key opens locked public loos. Their app identifies #changingplaces as well as accessible loos, and can even tell you what time the next bus is to get there. Free plaques are available for loos, too, so you can show everyone that you are a changing place was they enter your loo. See www.radarkey.org and www.loo.org for more. • Centrobed showed me how their turning bed works. It can be set at intervals to ensure the patient moves regularly – helping with breathing, coughing, bedsore and reducing the impact of heavy lifting on carers. Meanwhile, their children’s extendable bed grows with the child and comes in a Star Wars theme! See centrobed for more. • Sensara showed us how their monitoring technology can report to carers/relatives when patterns of behaviour change. They can even keep track using a GPS device, which can be used to speak to elderly people and find them if they get lost. Their product promotes independent living and gives carers piece of mind, as well as helping dementia sufferers to stay connected whilst in their own home. See sensara for more. • Sweetrich Mobility have developed a wheelchair which you control remotely from an app on your phone. Ryan even let our editor have a go! See the video here. • Beth from LifeBio.com told me about how her product builds up a person’s life story, which is turned into a remembrance book after they have passed. A great idea for relatives of for yourself, if you fancy a project later in life! • Platinum Health & Beauty make beautifully fresh designer products – including waterproof sheets – which feel like cotton. Their floral and wildlife patterns are featured on a range of products – a practical but pretty alternative to incontinence products which have a real countryside cottage feel. See platinumhealthandbeauty.com • A huge tablet which can be wheeled on a stand from room to room offers care home residents a tool from which to watch TV, play games and interact with family members via Skype and social media. Inspired Interaction showed me the engaging tablet – available up to 32” screen – which is proving a hit in nursing homes. See inspired-interaction.com • Kaz, founder of PositiveAboutMS, spoke about running social media groups, advertising and the affective of online marketing. His group aims to promote awareness of multiple sclerosis and reduce the negative stigma which is so often portrayed in the media about people with MS. See positiveaboutms.com or find the group on Facebook. Gary Hall, event director, said after the event, “What a show it’s been! Even we couldn’t have predicted the sheer volume of visitors, the response to each and every inspirational speaker and the calibre of exhibitors that filled the hall this year. “Thank you to every person who participated, attended and supported the event. We are proud to say that Naidex is pushing towards a more inclusive future, with your help.” To conclude, Naidex 2018 was a great event – informative, inclusive and eye-opening for people with mobility issues, nurses, carers and everyone involved in the care and nursing industry. The exciting developments showed how far the industry has come, and offered a glimpse into the future of product development. Roll on Naidex 2019 (which, by the way, will be held on 26 & 27 March at the NEC!). Photo credit: Paul Teclaff Photography For more on Naidex, see the website here and see Dementia Care & Nursing Home Expo.
Working the night shift: National Minimum Wage, sleep-ins and on-call staff
Wright Hassall, a top-ranked firm of lawyers with a specialist care home sector team, offer advice for employers on night shifts and the National Minimum Wage… Following Employment Tribunal decisions towards the end of 2017, it has been established that “sleep-ins” are covered by the National Minimum Wage (NMW) regulations. A worker, who is found to be working even though he is asleep, is entitled to the National Minimum Wage or the National Living Wage for the hours worked rather than a fixed fee incentive bonus as commonly paid in the past for these shifts. Whether the worker’s sleep has been interrupted or not makes no difference. Whilst this decision was made in relation to care providers, the ruling is applicable across all sectors. This may leave you wondering how this ruling affects your on-call staff, and what this means for workers who have historically worked such hours on a similar pay agreement. Does this affect my workforce? The first step you should take is to determine if employees are working during night time hours and secondly, determine whether they are actually considered to be working. The Government has provided the following guidelines to assist with defining night workers: • ‘Night hours’ apply whether the employee is on call or in the workplace; • A ‘night period’ is classed as 11pm to 5am; • Alternative times can be agreed, although this must be in writing, must be a minimum of 7 hours and must include both the times of midnight and 5am to qualify as ‘night hours’. So now you must consider if the employee is actually working. This is best explained with examples. Employee A has been asked to be on call for the night, as there is a risk that there may be high levels of work and extra assistance may be needed. The employee is able to go home and carry about their usual business, but must remain contactable. This employee is not deemed to be working for the purposes of the legislation and there is no requirement to pay them for the time they are on call. However if they are called into work they must be paid at least the minimum wage. Employee B has been asked to stay on site for the evening as you are anticipating high workloads and want the employee to be readily available should the need arise. Sleep facilities are available and the employee is free to sleep until they are called. For the purpose of this legislation this employee is deemed to be working and must be paid at the least minimum wage for the hours they are on call. What is the current National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage? For ages 16-17 it’s £4.05 an hour, age 18-20 it’s £5.60, 21-24 is £7.05 and the National Living Wage for (25+) is £7.50. Can my workforce bring forward a historic claim? Following the Employment Tribunal decisions, the government has waived historic fines for care providers found not to have paid staff the minimum wage for sleep-in shifts up to 26 July 2017. It has also suspended HMRC from enforcing back-pay and the minimum wage in the care sector for sleep-in shifts until it has worked out what impact it could have on the stability of social care. The Government has also launched a new compliance scheme for social care providers which may have incorrectly paid workers below legal minimum wage hourly rates for sleep-in shifts. The scheme has been designed to help ensure workers are paid what they are owed, while also maintaining important services for people who access social care. By joining the scheme, you can potentially avoid being subject to orders for back-pay and fines of up to 200% (or £20,000) of back-pay for non-compliance after 26 July 2017. The compliance scheme requires providers to declare any underpayment for sleep-in shifts to HMRC by 31 December 2018, disclose the amount paid to workers to HMRC and then pay the underpayment at the latest by 31 March 2019. The current position is that back-pay only becomes due if it appears payable on a HMRC inspection, or if an individual employee brings a complaint. The legal analysis underpinning the obligation to make payments is subject to review by the Court of Appeal which will hear conjoined cases of sleep-ins this month. With regards to businesses outside of the care sector this has yet to be challenged in the Employment Tribunal since the ruling. It is advised going forward that all pay is reviewed to ensure compliance where employees are working what could be considered as ‘sleep-in‘ shifts. For more information on Wright Hassall, see wrighthassall.co.uk.
Three ways to reduce food waste in your care home
As care homes tighten budgets, it is galling to know that up to three quarters of food waste which we bin is safe to eat*. Not only is this unsustainable due to the negative environmental impact it’s having, but it could also be costing your care home a lot of money. It’s extremely important to pay attention to care home kitchen functionality in order to be able to serve residents with delicious and nutritious meals. There are steps you can take to reduce food waste in your care home kitchen, and we’re going to give you some tips that will help. Keep an accurate inventory If you don’t already have an inventory system in your care home kitchen, implementing one is likely to cut your food waste dramatically. To create an inventory, make a note of the supplies you already have and add anything else that is delivered over time. You should also give each item a use-by date, so you always know which foods to use up first. This will make it much easier for you to look at what stock you have left and plan meals for the coming week accordingly. You’ll also be able to identify gaps in your inventory, so you know exactly when you need to order extra supplies. Not only will this help you to use up ingredients before they go off, but it will also prevent you from over-ordering. Make sure ingredients and leftovers are stored properly To ensure your ingredients and leftovers last, you need to store everything properly. This will greatly reduce the food waste in your care home kitchen. Mike Hardman from the catering wholesaler Alliance Online told us: “In the UK, it’s against the law to store chilled food above 8°C. I would always recommend keeping your fridge set to 5°C — this will help to guarantee you’re operating within the law. It’s also best to store foods that are raw and ready-to-eat separately. If your care home kitchen only has one fridge, storing raw food below cooked items is the best solution. “Cupboard foods can be kept at room temperature. These will have a long shelf life but can spoil once opened. You should always check the ‘once open, consume within X days’ instruction on the packaging. “Finally, you should try to set your freezer to -18°C or below, as this will prevent any bacteria growth. The quality of frozen food can depreciate, though — that’s why frozen foods still come with use-by dates.” Think carefully about portion sizes to avoid food waste Any food left on your residents’ plates will go straight in the bin. So, if you often end up throwing perfectly good food away, it’s probably time to look at your portion sizes. A possible solution is to offer more than one meal size. So, when residents request what they would like to eat for dinner, they can also choose a portion size that fits their appetite. This can make a huge difference. It’s important we all do our bit for the environment, and cutting your care home’s food waste is a great place to start. Take these tips on board and you’ll start to see results in no time. * WRAP
We’re backing the Changing Places campaign for accessible toilet facilities
Care & Nursing Essentials magazine are proud to be backing the Changing Places campaign. Tired of not being able to access toilets in public, healthcare workers are joining parents and disability rights campaigners to call on shops, restaurants and public buildings to accommodate adults who need to change in a dignified way. The Twitter campaign #changingplaces has been highlighting inadequate toilet facilities and praising firms who have invested in hoists, adult-sized changing tables, grip handles and pull-cord alarms to ensure people of all abilities can change without being embarrassed – and so that carers can lift and handle without putting themselves at risk. One mum fed-up of having to change her seven-year-old son on urine-soaked floors has taken her camping Pants Down For Equality to the capital. Sarah Brisdion, a mother of twins, will demonstrate in the window of Baker Street’s Bathstore – sitting on the toilet with her knickers down for a full day. She wants to highlight the loss of dignity and issue of inequality surrounding changing youngsters and adults in public without the appropriate facilities. We caught up with Sarah – whose son Hadley, seven, has cerebral palsy and is a full-time wheelchair user – to find out more about her campaign: What kind of toilet issues do you and Hadley face when out and about in public? When we are out and about in public we are usually terrified if Hadley needs the toilet because more often than not there will not be a toilet that Hadley can use safely. So we sadly avoid going out much because the stress and danger of trying to manage in a standard toilet is just too much at times. If there is not a Changing Places toilet for Hadley to use then we have to do one of three things. Either: 1) Lie Hadley on a disgusting toilet floor to remove his bottom layers and lift him onto the toilet – repeating the process afterwards to redress him. The lifting alone is so dangerous, but the germs that he and I are both exposed to when lying and kneeling on a toilet floor are even more petrifying. 2) Take him to the car and lie him in the boot to sort his underwear and continence items and use a commode – all in view of the public and in freezing conditions during the winter months. 3) Let him relieve himself in a nappy and sit in his bodily waste until we can get somewhere safe to change him. This is at times hideously painful and can really damage his skin. What’s your worst experience of changing and how did it affect you and Hadley? We have sadly had so many hideous experiences now it is hard to pick just one. But I think the time we went out bowling with friends and stopped to give the kids a treat in McDonalds really sticks in my memory. Unfortunately Hadley had a bowel movement during his meal and so we simply couldn’t go home and change him. We struggled into what is possibly the smallest disabled toilet I’ve ever been in, the floor was absolutely disgusting and the smell as bad. So, leaving the wheelchair outside the door (as it wouldn’t fit in the toilet with my husband and I) we attempted to change Hadley on the baby changing drop down table. Hadley is twice the size of one of these units so I had to rest my knee under it to take the weight, his legs were wedged against the door and my husband tried to clean him up. All the while he was sobbing and begging us to get it finished as quickly as possible. I don’t know how I kept the tears at bay. I guess I just don’t want him to see how much it upsets me too. I don’t want him to blame himself for these situations. I am genuinely so scared about his mental health. He knows he is not a baby. He knows this is not fair and he knows that this is not what his sister or any of his friends have to endure. How unvalued he must feel? It literally breaks my heart. All he and we want to do is to be able to go out as a family, enjoy a day out and a treat and not have to put our child through this dangerous situation just because he needs a bit of extra help going to the toilet. He deserves so much more than a toilet floor. What does the PantsDown4Equality campaign entail? On May 11th, I will be taking my loo selfie stunt to a whole new level…. by sitting on the toilet in a Bathstore showroom window on Baker Street, London, in full view of the public, pants down, for a whole day! My mission is to raise awareness of the dire conditions that Hadley, and hundreds of thousands of other disabled people, face when using the toilet away from home. I will be joined in the window by special guests from around the country, including: actress and disability rights campaigner Samantha Renke; Fraser and Friends’, Shelley Simmonds: Department of Ability creator Dan White; The Mum on a Mission Laura Moore and self-confessed loo lady Emma Spagnola to name just a few. It’s shocking that in 2018, disabled people still have to endure this. We need to put a stop to this inhumane situation and encourage venues to upgrade their facilities and become more inclusive. Toilets are not glamorous. We shy away from talking about pee, poo and periods, so as Changing Places campaigners we have to go to extreme lengths to get our cause noticed. We will all be sitting, pants down, to try to get the full attention this human rights issue deserves. How are you feeling in advance of your Bathstore demo? I have lots of lovely special guests taking part, with probably between 10 and 20 other people taking it in turns throughout
Infection control – prevention is key to tackling the threat of antimicrobial resistance
Helen Dunn, member of the Infection Prevention Society and Lead Nurse in infection control and prevention at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, talks to Care & Nursing Essentials about antimicrobial resistance… In 2011 the Chief Medical Officer announced antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as a major threat to public health. This issue is also an item on the national risk register and it is widely acknowledged that it could have a severe impact on the health, morbidity and mortality of current and future generations. The causes of AMR are complex but include the overuse or misuse of antibiotics in animal and human health, poor hygiene and a lack of infection prevention and control. Across the globe action is being taken to address this threat. Public Health England recently launched a national public-facing campaign, “Keep antibiotics working”, to encourage the avoidance of using antibiotics unnecessarily. Whilst this is important, it’s also vital that there is increased understanding of the critical role that infection prevention plays in preventing AMR. By upholding rigorous infection prevention strategies, infection spread can be minimised and the need for antibiotics can therefore be avoided. But how does this issue affect patients in long-term care facilities and what can we do as health and care workers to help reduce the risk of AMR? Antibiotics can be used to treat infections caused by bacteria such as MRSA or E-coli but we know that they won’t treat patients with viruses and if used in this way can lead to AMR. To reduce the spread of viral infections health and care workers should focus on rigorous infection prevention strategies, including appropriate hand hygiene, personal protective equipment, the application of standard precautions at all times and transmission based precautions when patients have signs and symptoms of infection. Appropriate cleaning of the environment and equipment is also vital to prevent cross transmission. Vaccination is available for some viruses including seasonal influenza and uptake should be encouraged across vulnerable groups including those over 65 and health and care workers who work in these settings. Effective infection prevention and control can avoid one in three health care-associated infections. This means less need for antibiotics, which in turn reduces the spread of AMR. Let’s work together to ensure we only use them when they are really needed. For more information on infection control, see the Infection Prevention Society website.
Harley Street Spine launch new website to make medical enquiries easier
Recognising the influence of internet when patients are seeking medical guidance, Harley Street Spine has launched a brand new website featuring updates on its services and expertise. Mr Bob Chatterjee, director and lead surgeon of the practice, has upgraded the online portal offering patients and medical referrers a chance to further understand a range of potential conditions – and the treatment pathways associated with them. Reseachers found that an increasing number of people, as many as 1 in 4, are looking online to assess their health as they find it becoming harder to get a doctor’s appointment. Providing accurate and updated medical information online is now fundamental for guiding patients at least to an experienced and qualified specialist. Mr Chatterjee says, “With the Internet era, there is an awful lot of information out there regarding spinal conditions and their treatment. However, I would caution, that a lot of it can be either generalising or misleading and that it should be your surgeon’s job to put the information in context to you on an individual basis. “Nevertheless, it is useful to have some information to help understand conditions and the following below include both my patient information leaflets and trusted sources of information”. The new website offers all the locations for consultation and places of surgery such as Highgate Private Hospital with dedicated online appointment forms for the patient, GP and Allied Professional referral and international referral forms. Harley Street Spine is led by Mr Bob Chatterjee alongside a medical team specialising in all forms of spinal surgery from skull to pelvis and minimally invasive keyhole surgery and spinal treatment in the elderly. Mr Bob Chatterjee has undertaken a Royal College of Surgeons accredited spinal training programme in both Orthopaedics and Neurosurgery. Mr Chatterjee is also a Senior Spinal Consultant at The Royal Free Hospitals NHS Trust and also the new Chief of Spinal Surgery at the hospital of St. John’s and St. Elizabeth’s in North London. To view the Harley Street Spine website, see harleystreetspine.co.uk
Age Space: an online resource for relatives going through care process
Editor Victoria Galligan spoke to Annabel James, founder of Age Space, about how people caring for elderly relatives were crying out for some more support – and what she did about it. Eight weeks visiting her mum in the Stroke Unit at Poole Hospital started Annabel James thinking. She felt increasingly isolated and anxious about the decisions that had to be made; not knowing where to find answers – or even what the questions were some of the time. As Annabel shared her experience with family and friends it became clear that she wasn’t alone. She then spent a year researching possible solutions which led to her setting up agespace.org – a one-stop online resource for anyone anxious about or caring for elderly parents or relatives. The website is targeted at “the sandwich generation”, those aged 45+ who may be juggling busy lives of work, children and supporting elderly parents. It aims to be the trusted local guide, organised by county, signposting to organisations and services that can help for any aspect of elderly care. It also aims to de-mystify issues such as funding care and the legal aspects of ageing and frailty. Annabel said, “Recognising that parents can no longer cope can be a real challenge, so Age Space provides checklists of things to look out for such as unopened post, the house becoming untidy, and personal hygiene issues; it also suggests options for more support or changes to living arrangements. The website shares suggestions for choosing a care home or care services – does it pass the Mum test? Would you leave your Mum with these people or in this place?” The information provided is practical and based on experiences and expert guidance – such as information on being discharged from hospital. So often families find themselves making decisions in a crisis and it can be very hard to know what to do for the best. Age Space aims to change all this. The website currently operates local online portals in Norfolk, Dorset and Sussex with plans to launch in Cheshire and the South West later this year with a national roll-out within three years. Annabel added, “Involving families in the care of their loved ones is really important for all concerned. Crucially it shouldn’t be just about the care – it’s as much about how someone lives as full and happy a life as possible whatever the setting of their care. “With ever-increasing pressure on the health and social care services, the Government has to do more than short-term, stop-gap solutions. It is such a complex issue that ideally there would be a cross-party commitment to finding long-term sustainable ways to support our ageing population.” The forthcoming Green Paper is welcomed by Annabel, but she said she is “concerned that any final recommendations will not go far enough”. For more information, find Age Space on Facebook or go to agespace.org
