Caring for people with dementia isn’t easy. Whether it’s offering information, support and practical guidance to the person with dementia and their loved ones, or taking part in the relevant dementia training alongside maintaining and meeting the standards set by your care service, each day is different and every task comes with its own difficulties.
At The Access Group, we have been digitising various national and international businesses for over 30 years. Whether you run an independent care service or you work for a company that provides care across the country, no task is too big or too small and we have the tools to help you succeed at work.
While our main aim is to improve the lives of service providers and service users, we also want to help friends and family who may be struggling with the diagnosis of their loved ones. If you’re providing home care to dementia patients or they reside at your care service, here are some tips on how to provide care for people with dementia including 7 common mistakes and how to avoid them.
What is a Provider Information Return (PIR)?
CQC PIR (Provider Information Return) forms are intrinsically linked to Key Lines of Enquiries (KLOEs) and are designed to assist inspectors to gather useful information about an adult social care provider before an inspection takes place.
Before we start exploring the CQC PIR, if you are not aware, the CQC has revamped and introduced fundamental changes to inspections of services across health and social care. As part of this they have replaced the Key Lines of Enquiry and made a host of other important changes you should be aware of.
Read our article on the new CQC Single Assessment Framework and for a more detailed look you should also download these free guides on the CQC's:
and
Despite these changes, the CQC's five key questions remain, and the content requested as part of a PIR includes key data, as well as some information in response to those five key questions around your service's:
- Safety
- Effectiveness
- Level of care
- Responsiveness
- Well-led approach
This pre-inspection questionnaire is sent to providers to help the Care Quality Commission (CQC) determine which areas the inspectors will focus on during their visit.
Care home fire safety is vital to resident and staff safety. Majority if not all residents will have vulnerabilities of some kind. Having a detailed and effective fire safety plan is crucial to ensure everyone can evacuate safely.
Establishing effective and sufficient fire safety evacuation plans in care homes however, is a lot more complex than in typical working environments. It can be devastating when things go wrong and can lead to serious consequences if they are not implemented correctly. Unlimited Fines and up to 2 years imprisonment can be issued if you do not follow fire safety regulations and provide adequate training.
Those involved with the fire safety of care homes have the responsibility to keep the building, the staff, and their residents safe. In 2011 BBC London revealed how dozens of care homes were ordered to improve after failing to achieve even basic fire safety standards.
Here is a guide answering all questions surrounding the fire safety of care homes, its importance, and how to develop a sufficient fire safety evacuation plan to keep everyone safe so even if a fire does occur it does not cause devastating impacts onto your care business.
How to make a care home outstanding – why you should care
If your first question is what do the CQC do? They are the Care Quality Commission, the regulator of health and care services in England.
The CQC award overall ratings to care homes, ranging from Outstanding (being the very best), followed by ‘Good;, ‘Requires Improvement’ and lastly ‘Inadequate’.
An Outstanding rating is coveted by all care home operators and understandably so. Only 3.5% of care homes are ‘outstanding’. Having an outstanding rating can boost your ability to attract more residents, either from loved ones or council commissioners feeling more confident in your abilities.
It can also give you positive PR, which in turn can boost intake of residents. You will see many care homes being featured in local press and trade media when they receive an outstanding rating. Any press a care home gets when it is rated inadequate is unlikely to have been sought or welcomed by the care home itself!
Finally, an outstanding rating can boost staff morale and confidence, on a day-to-day basis and when the next inspection comes around. It can even boost recruitment and certainly boost the confidence and profile of the care home’s registered manager.
The health and social care sector is heavily regulated to protect people from the risk of harm from the delivery of, and to maintain and raise standards in health and social care.
Making sure statutory regulations offer the most effective and well-adjusted means of delivering a public protection function is at the core of any decision to regulate a profession.
There are several bodies that are responsible for regulating a variety of aspects within the health and social care sector. Many of whom have specific legislation and power over the HSE (Health and Safety Executive, Britain’s national regulator for workplace health and safety). This article will give you a more detailed overview of the UK’s regulators for health and social care and what they do.
Dementia awareness training should be seen as fundamental by everyone working in care. This is because in the UK, an estimated 850,000 people currently live with dementia and by 2025, this figure is expected to rise to 1 million and will double by 2050. This combined with the continuous rise in the average lifespan means that care workers and other professionals working in health and social care must have the vital skills and wisdom to look after people living with the condition.
The best way to get all of your employees in your care service on the same page is to implement dementia training as part of your mandatory learning and development agenda. There are many ways to put this into effect and in this article, we will be taking a closer look into what the courses involve, the benefits of dementia training and how to get it right.
With over 30 years of experience digitising health and social care businesses across the world, when it comes to implementing dementia training in your care service successfully, we at The Access Group have the expertise you need to succeed.
The All Wales Induction Framework (AWIF) has been put in place to ensure workers in health and social care understand the importance of person-centred practice and values, both of which are highly important in the sector. It creates a firm basis for new employees to help them develop and understand their practice and future careers, in and across health and social care.
At The Access Group, we dedicate our time to educating and supporting people in care across the world. With over 30 years of experience digitising businesses of all sizes, we know what you need to succeed.
We aim to provide the best support possible to improve the lives of people who dedicate their lives to working in the industry, and those who rely on a particular service. We also offer All Wales Induction Framework Training as part of our health and social care eLearning system.
If you want to know more about how the All Wales Induction Framework works, we have put together this guide to help you gain a better understanding of it.
The Protecting Vulnerable Groups or PVG scheme is a membership managed by Disclosure Scotland. People who do regulated work with vulnerable adults or children have to join, as it ensures they are suitable to work with vulnerable groups. This helps to protect those who need it, as it prevents inappropriate people from getting into regulated work with them.
We at The Access Group are committed to educating people in care across the world. With over 30 years of experience digitising businesses big and small, we know what we are talking about and aim to provide the utmost support to improve the lives of those who work in the industry and people who rely on a particular service.
If you want to know more about how the PVG scheme works, how long checks take, membership costs and more, we have put together this guide to help you gain a better understanding of this system.
Strength based approaches are not abnormal across a variety of different sectors. In the social care sector this helps to focus on individuals’ strengths to maximise their independence for longer.
You may be wondering what a strength based approach in social care is? Or you might be wondering why it is important and what it’s benefits are. This article will answer these questions by reviewing the six key principles of a strengths based approach in relation to social care.
At The Access Group we want all local authorities and providers of care to be able to meet their duties under the Care Act. We think it is crucial therefore that you are provided with all the information needed so both care providers and care commissioners deliver the best approach possible to offer individuals the support they want and need when they need it.
Whether they’re for cleaning, decorating or general maintenance, hazardous substances in a care home are not uncommon. In general, these products will rarely contain large amounts of harmful chemicals. However, prolonged exposure or misuse of these substances will have the potential to inflict serious harm on both employees and service users.
Here at The Access Group, we have over 30 years of experience working to digitise care services across the world. We know the struggles registered managers come across when keeping on top of their COSHH policy and procedures in care homes and keeping their teams and service users safe, but we also know how to fix this with our fantastic range of care home software.
If you want to know how to safely use, manage and store chemical hazards in a care home and understand why COSHH is important in health and social care, we have put together this useful guide to help you do just that. Here’s an overview of the top 7 hazardous substances in care homes and how to ensure their safe management.
