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Rapid response teams to help older people at home.

Care agency service

The NHS is planning to relieve strain on hospitals by offering a visit within two hours.

New teams will include nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, social workers and social care staff.

The “urgent community response” teams will operate 365 days a year and will help older people and those with complex care needs try to avoid ending up in hospital.

The teams are a key element of the NHS’s plan to provide increasing amounts of care in people’s homes.

The NHS and councils in seven areas of England will start putting the teams together and hiring staff from April 2020, with at least three starting to offer the service before next winter. Cheshire is one of the 7 areas.

Age UK estimates that there are almost 500,000 older people in England who are living at home and have multiple health and care needs.

About Deckchair Care

Deckchair Care are an independent, privately-owned care agency. We look after the elderly in Cheshire and South Manchester.

Read more about our care service

Thanks to ChatGPT for help creating and editing this article.

elderly care

Deckchair Care are an independent, privately-owned care agency. We look after the elderly in Cheshire and South Manchester.

Read more about our care service

Thanks to ChatGPT for help creating and editing this article.

elderly care
elderly care
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NHS Trusts trialing video conferencing

Care agency service

The chief information officer for West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, is championing the use of technology to improve the patient journey and enrich the experience of their staff.

An IT strategy runs from 2018 to 2021, that is largely around the programme of work agreed with NHS Digital.

One pilot scheme is being tested with a care home in the region.

The reason for the pilot is that the hospital sees 180 patients a year that didn’t actually need to attend the hospital – with many of them coming from a care home setting.

The pilot means we providing a small plastic suitcase with a tablet computer and a small number of Bluetooth devices that allow the care home staff, under the guidance of clinical staff at the hospital, to check the patient’s temperature and blood pressure and feed that into a virtual triage of the patient.

They can then add other clinical parties to the conversation – including an on-call GP, mental health and social care staff, or other clinicians, in order to reach a decision about what the best course of action is for a particular patient.

Apart from offering a fast, more efficient service, it eliminates the need for some patients to go to hospital and generate a saving in excess of £150,000.

NHS Foundation Trusts should continue to innovate so they can generate a return on investment through better patient care, diagnoses, staff experience and an increase in efficiency.

Read more about the work being done here.

About Deckchair Care

Deckchair Care are an independent, privately-owned care agency. We look after the elderly in Cheshire and South Manchester.

Read more about our care service

Thanks to ChatGPT for help creating and editing this article.

elderly care

Deckchair Care are an independent, privately-owned care agency. We look after the elderly in Cheshire and South Manchester.

Read more about our care service

Thanks to ChatGPT for help creating and editing this article.

elderly care
Home Care Agency
Care Agency in Gatley, Cheadle
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Hospitals with Vintage Makeover to help dementia patients

Funding social care

Photographs and films, ration books and a 1950s televisions have been used to transform wards across the UK into reassuringly familiar settings – including 1950s tearooms and seaside beach huts.

NHS England believes the “dementia-friendly adaptations” will help patients who struggle to adjust to their surroundings.

It is hoped these items from bygone eras may help trigger patients’ memories. If patients are engaged in meaningful activity and given mental stimulation, then they sleep better, feel less agitated, are less likely to get up in the night and less likely to fall.

Having a dementia-friendly place to stay may help these patients adjust better to their surroundings and reduce their reliance on medicine.

Hospitals taking part in the project

  • London’s Royal Free Hospital
  • West Yorkshire’s Airedale Hospital
  • Hull Royal Infirmary
  • Royal Preston Hospital
  • Wirrals Arrowe Park hospital
  • Grantham Hospital’s Manthorpe Centre:
  • Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Hospital in Margate:

Themes include:

  • A cinema room where patients can watch footage of old street scenes and sporting events from the 1950s and 1960s.
  • 1940s style reminiscence room, featuring pictures of ration books and old photographs
  • A ‘memories pub’ complete with replica beer taps and vintage posters.
  • Dementia wards, corridors and day rooms kitted out in a vintage seaside theme with beach huts signposting patient bays and a retro boardwalk mural.
  • A 1950s-themed “memory room” where patients can relax among period furniture, artwork and a replica 1950s television.
  • A day room, where patients can do a jigsaw or listen to the hospital choir sing music from the 1940s and 50s, with a retro television cabinet and vintage-style furniture.

About Deckchair Care

Deckchair Care are an independent, privately-owned care agency. We look after the elderly in Cheshire and South Manchester.

Read more about our care service

Thanks to ChatGPT for help creating and editing this article.

elderly care

Deckchair Care are an independent, privately-owned care agency. We look after the elderly in Cheshire and South Manchester.

Read more about our care service

Thanks to ChatGPT for help creating and editing this article.

elderly care
elderly care
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‘Care injustice’ Means Limited Access to Good Quality Social Care

care agency in stockport

NHS funding and soaring patient demand in England are fuelling “care injustice” where patients cannot access good quality social care because of where they live, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has found.

£20bn has already been announced for the NHS, but it is not clear if any of this will help support social care which is creating many of the health services’ woes.

Peter Wyman, chairman of the CQC, said: “It is increasingly clear without a long-term funding settlement for adult social care, the additional funding for the NHS will be spent treating people with complex conditions for whom care in the community would have been more effective both in terms of their health and wellbeing and use of public money.”

Or see the full CQC report here

Read more about the report here.

About Deckchair Care

Deckchair Care is a privately owned independent domiciliary care company. We look after the elderly and disabled between Didsbury and Alderley Edge in South Manchester / Cheshire.

Read more about our care service on our main website https://www.deckchaircare.co.uk

elderly care

 

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Is the Government Ignoring Dementia?

elderly care

Senior figures from Alzheimer’s Research UK, Dementia UK, and Alzheimer’s Scotland have urged the health secretary to put dementia “at the heart” of health plans for the next 10 years.

“We are deeply concerned that dementia has not been recognised in these top areas of focus,” the charities write, describing dementia as “the greatest health challenge of our time”.

Hilary Evans, Chief Executive of Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “Dementia takes a huge amount of resource for the NHS – one in four hospital beds are occupied by people with dementia, and the condition currently costs the UK economy more than cancer and heart disease combined. It’s imperative that our health system is able to respond to the challenges dementia poses today and in the future, and we must begin by placing dementia at the heart of its priorities.”

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: “We remain committed to making this the best country in the world for dementia care, support, research and awareness.

“NHS England is committed to offering support for patients diagnosed with dementia and over the last few years has seen the diagnosis rate increase from half, to more than two thirds of patients, enabling earlier care and support.

“We maintain a focus on diagnosis and support for people with dementia and their carers, as we develop the ten year plan.”

For more information about how we help people and families help care for dementia suffers, see our main website:

https://www.deckchaircare.co.uk

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Blame and Targets Stopping Better NHS and Social Care Communication

elderly care

A recent report by the CQC blames a lack of communication between care providers and the NHS for bed blocking.

Social care and healthcare providers were failing to properly work together, the regulator warned, with divisions “sharpened” by “defensive behaviours”, it concluded.

“The sustainability of the health service depends on a sustainable social care system”

Read the article here

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/02/targets-blame-culture-stop-older-people-getting-proper-care/

Find out more about how Deckchair Care uses technology to improve social care delivery and communication

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Set up a National Care Service to protect our NHS

Home much does home care cost

Writing in the Guardian, Sonia Sodha’s article outlines how the NHS and Social care need to be joined up to save both.

“The founding principles of the health service must be extended to social care. Otherwise, the NHS will be run into the ground”

“.. the NHS embodies not just the principle that the affluent pay more than the poor through their taxes, but that the sick don’t pay more than the healthy”

“.. while it may be alive and well in the NHS, it’s glaringly absent from social care. If you’re unlucky enough to get cancer, you are covered by the NHS. Get dementia, however, and those with modest assets are on their own until they have spent much of their savings; even then, cuts to local authority budgets, out of which social care is paid, mean it’s increasingly hard to get state help.”

“We shouldn’t be expecting baby boomers to meet costs individually, but asking more affluent retirees to pay for the social care system through progressive taxation”

Read the full article here

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/04/nhs-social-care-health-service

Find out more about Deckchair Care and their at-home care services

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NHS to get £20bn, but Social Care Still Waits

at home care

Social Care Funding Still Waiting

With the recent announcement that the government is investing £20bn in the NHS (which is obviously good news), the spotlight has again turned to social care funding – or lack of.

“Putting money into the NHS without putting it into social care is like pouring water down a sink with no plug in”

There is an estimated £2.5bn social care funding shortfall, but at least the government green paper on how to fix/fund it is due in the next few weeks.

Read the full article here:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nhs-20-billion-bail-out-theresa-may-social-care-warning-spending-a8403481.html

 

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Social Care and the impact on the NHS

elderly care

A recent article in the Guardian outlines the social care funding crisis and how it is impacting on NHS resources.

“Almost 1.2 million people aged over 65 do not receive the support they need with essential daily tasks such as getting washed and dressed or preparing meals, according to Age UK. The perilous state of the domiciliary care sector, which provides support in people’s own homes, is one of the main reasons for this, the charity says.”

One of the major problems currently experienced by care agencies is highlighted in the article:

“Colin Angel, the UKHCA policy and campaigns director, says the £18 per hour is “based on the absolute minimum price, assuming you can recruit enough workers on the minimum or living wage. Typically we’re seeing wages that are often below local labour market expectations, which means you’ll have difficulty recruiting workers. You’ll find providers have less money left over for things like back-office staff”

Deckchair Care pay their carers 33% more than the minimum wage and guarantee contracted hours, yet recruiting excellent reliable carers is still a challenge – but something we do not compromise on.

Read the full article here:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/30/what-good-surgery-homecare-crisis-council-funding-older-people