Whereforcare? You tell us!

A man living with dementia was tasered by police, had his arms and legs tied up in his living room, and was carried out of his home ‘like a sack of potatoes’ because of his refusal to go into care.

Two months later, the man in question is still receiving psychiatric care and his wife, whom he only married in 2010, has been left traumatised by the ordeal.

This will no doubt once again throw up a huge debate as to the treatment of those living with a dementia and other related conditions.  No doubt, in the current financial climate, the police might argue that they don’t have the ‘resources’ to provide their officers with specialist training, but really, hasn’t the time come to start beig creative with training in such areas?

There are so many care homes who have developed specialist dementia training programmes who I have no doubt would be happy to offer thier assistance to police forces, and judging by this example, it is something which is long overdue.

Equally, maybe the police force need to start investigating a little more closely the resources that they already have at their disposal?  My sister for example, who has been in the Thames Valley police for three years is actually qualified to deliver the very rigorous and in-depth Alzheimer’s Society Dementia Training Programme- when you have resources such as this to hand, there is really no excuse for an incident like that indicated above to be repeated.

A study for the Daycare Trust in conjunction with the University of Oxford has found that Ofsted inspections are too broad to provide parents with an accurate measure of childcare settings.

The study found that Ofsted inspections provide more of a regulatory tool rather than a quality measure.  The study compared the Early Years Foundation Stage- based Ofsted inspections with standardised inspection tools used in other countries, including the Early Childhood Environment Scale (ECERS) and the Infant Toddler Environment Rating Scale (ITERS) as well as quality assurance schemes.

The Daycare Trust recommends that decisions around choosing the right childcare provider should be made using many available tools and not just Ofsted Inspection Reports.

This should come as no surprise, and in many ways captures the essence of the www.whereforcare.co.uk website.  By using a website such as Whereforcare in conjunction with Ofsted reports and obviously visiting various nurseries, one can get a much more broad idea of where provides good childcare and where doesn’t.

If you have experience of a childcare establishment or nursery, feel free to write a rating of it at the WhereforCare website to help others to make the right choice.

A care home manager from a Bupa Care Home in Croxteth, Liverpool was today found guilty of wilful neglect of a resident living with a dementia at Liverpool Crown Court.

Karen Southern, 53,  who at the time was the manager of Stonedale Lodge, a Bupa Care Home in Croxteth, wept as her conviction was read out in court today.

She has been convicted of wilful neglect of Joyce Farrow, a ninety year old resident living with a dementia, who was found crawling around her bedroom naked, cold, thirsty and covered in her own faeces as well as rashes and sores by her daughter Pauline Slaughter.

This is an absolutely heartbreaking story, and the type of which we should never be hearing.

What is highlights to me is that with the growth of care home companies , such as Bupa Care Homes who have 302 care homes across Great Britain and Northern Ireland, comes the inability to maintain standards across all homes.

Don’t get me wrong, having met several of the senior management from Bupa Care Homes, I have no doubt that their intentions in caring for their residents are of the highest order, but I really feel that the issue becomes one of an inability to maintain standards across such a large group of care homes.

No where has this been better highlighted than in the debacle that was Southern Cross Care Homes where, given a lack of resources, standards in some of their care homes were evidenced to be very poor indeed.

Even in smaller groups of care homes, those with perhaps 20 care homes, the difference in standrads as they grow is significant.  Having worked with and for several care home groups and individual care homes over the years, it is my contention that any care home group of more than 15 care homes will inevitably see standards drop as there is only so much direct managment control which can take place, hence fire fighting serious issues becomes the norm rather than developing continually higher standards of care.

Personally, if the government ever do get around to a serious examination of those issues that led to the collapse of Southern Cross Care Homes, I think the size of care home groups should be taken into consideration.  After all, surely there has to be a limit as to how much profit can be made on the back of poor care delivery?