At RedRoyal Consultancy our passion is to raise the standards of Health and Social Care in pursuit of excellence. At the centre of any Health Care and Support, the emphasis must always be on the individual customer. The Care and Support therefore should always support the individual to live as independently as possible, maintaining their rights, dignity, health and wellbeing.
As providers of Health and Social Care Services we are all aware of what it means to provide high quality care, which essentially means that by providing high quality care we can meet the compliance standards. Yet very few services appear to maintain constant high standards with only 2% achieving the Outstanding Grading. In our experience the reasons are very often a result of the financial pressures tinged with complacency and lack of communication of staff teams. When a staff member comes on shift and is not given a full handover, simply told what duty they should perform and they begin working flat out for the full shift. All their dedication, hard work and caring cannot compensate for the lack of a full handover and comprehensive up to date information.
There are so many examples, recently while supporting a service with Person-Centred Care Planning we discovered that the Care Plans were, to use the Manager’s description “generic”. As some residents were happy to sit in their rooms and watch TV, this had been written into the care plans of other residents who did not like watching TV. Other specifics included a preference to bath every other day, this customer had been lucky if she had received a bath most weeks. Another example recently where a Dementia sufferer was asked for and gave consent with staff approval for research into falls. The residents daughter who has Lasting Power of Attorney and is legally responsible for making decisions was not consulted. Further examples include a medicine chart indicating that a topical cream should be applied twice daily, records indicate that it was applied just once daily. Most of these examples can be explained by the lack of communication and observation. The care planning in the example was very clearly not person centred.
All of the above are very simply rectified, staff should be encouraged to ask questions and challenge.
