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In the News
8/8/08 'CSCI star ratings will raise standards across all care homes' Quality ratings for care homes have ‘huge potential’ to raise standards ‘across the board’, the head of the industry’s regulator told the conference. Paul Snell, chief inspector of CSCI, said the new ratings, which were launched in May, would help inform decisions by councils, customers and providers. ‘Councils are using quality ratings to influence purchasing and providers are using them for performance management.’
Barchester Healthcare plans to publish its ratings. Other providers are setting up bonus schemes for senior staff who hit quality targets.
But quality ratings will only work if they have the confidence of the sector, Mr Snell said.
‘There are two issues of concern to providers:consistency of practice and judgment and the need to be able to challenge the ratings.’
CSCI has put improved quality assurance systems in place to ensure ratings are fair and consistent, he reassured delegates. A market review group will also monitor their overall market impact. On the challenge issue, he said providers would be able to request a review of their rating before it was published.
Rob Finch - Caring Business
07/08/2008 Doubts over future of extra care - The future of the ‘extra care’ sector could be in doubt if impinges on the work of registered care homes, a new policy report warns.
The Building Choices: Personal Budgets and Older People’s Housing report by housing provider Housing 21 suggests that there is a risk that linking social care contracts with housing could push extra care into being recategorised as care homes. They would then come under regulatory scrutiny and incur more costs, the report suggests.
The report, based on the views of a workshop of ‘stakeholders’ in the older people’s housing and care sector, says that some fear that housing providers
should withdraw from the care market, while other believe that providing such services creates new opportunities.
7/8/08 - Avoiding 'baby-talk' reduces people with dementia's resistence to care workers' actions -
Residents with dementia will respond better to care workers if they avoid using ‘baby talk’, new research suggests.
American researchers have found that residents with dementia were more likely to ‘resist’ care when nursing staff used ‘elderspeak communication’ comprising simplified grammar and vocabulary, substitution of collective pronouns, and overly intimate endearments.
The study, presented at the International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease in Chicago this week, used scores of ‘resistiveness’ based on the action of residents such as screaming, pushing, pulling or biting, and the severity of the resistence.
The researchers, from the University of Kansas School of Nursing, found that the Resistiveness to Care Scale (RTC) probability was 0.55 when ‘elderspeak’ was used during typical activities such as dressing and washing.
In contrast, the probability of RTC was 0.26 when staff used normal adult communication, while silence resulted in an RTC probability of 0.36.
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