Posts belonging to Category Health Care

In many countries the end-of-life care is just not there. The Lien Foundation of Singapore commissioned a study to look at the end-of-life care services in 40 countries.

Being looked after in a Care setting

While “quality-of-life” is a common phrase, “quality-of-death” is considered far less. According to the Worldwide Palliative Care Alliance (WPCA) while more than 100 million people are in need of hospice services only fewer than 8% actually receive it.

For us in the UK we are ranked number one for end-of-life services this arises from a good network of hospices, statutory involvement, public awareness, training for NHS staff and access to painkillers for patients.

Ranking second was Australia then New Zealand, the USA was ninth and India was bottom of the rankings.

The charity Help the Hospices said the UK’s ranking was down to the hard work of individual hospices.

To improve end-of-life care the system needs to build around bringing the care to the patient – preferably in their own homes – by providing support for family caregivers, care teams that can go to homes with emergency coverage, and strong integration of hospice care expertise to maximize quality of life for both patient and family. This means fewer resources for hospitals and nursing homes, and more resources for home and community-based care services.

For the first time in humanity, people over 65 will soon outnumber children under the age of five. We need to continue to improve the end-of-life care, much hospice care can – and is – given at home and by increasing the proportion of community and homecare options, hospice care can reduce costs associated with hospital stays and emergency admissions.

In the UK, despite the ranking, too many people still faced the end-of-life without specialist care and support. The ageing population in the UK and the improvement in medical care means more people are facing end-of-life with more complex issues. The UK system needs proper funding to ensure people can be properly looked after at the end of their lives.

Mike Frizzell Everycare Central Hants www.everycarehants.co.uk supplying care at home and supporting people to live independently.

With the squeeze on Government spending there is concern that the quality of care given will reduce. As the care industry is very much a people driven industry if the amount being paid for care is falling then the amount of labour cost must fall to keep care businesses viable. In the Care Home setting this can result in lower numbers of carers and in the home care setting the use of cheaper labour or trying to do more i.e. rushing the care provided.

The fear is that a two tier system will emerge with private clients paying for the care that they require and state funded clients getting a poorer standard of care. With an increasing number of people getting older then there is real pressure on the system to be able to deliver the level of care required.

Our concern as a service provider is that we will not be able to tempt new carers into the market if we cannot afford to pay a high enough rate.

We can certainly vouch for the fact that there has been limited Government support for setting up our Care Agency and certainly no specific advice in the area of Care. The local authority has offered some support.

We agree with the main findings in the report that you will find a link to below. This report was commissioned by PriceWaterHouseCoopers.

Everycare are committed to delivering a high quality of home care and will not compromise on this at all.

Fair Care Crisis Report

By Mike Frizzell Everycare Central Hants www.everycarehants.co.uk

This was found in the house of a friend’s mother after she passed away. I expect she never complained about the home care she got and even goes on to thank them for the work they did. See what you think for yourself.

On being looked after by the social services and how to learn to love it

Twenty-one people a week tramp through my kitchen, all bent on doing me a good turn.

They all have different ways. Some funny, some deplorable.

Some will wash out and rinse an empty milk bottle, others will leave it until a more helpful person deals with it.

Some will put a milk bottle on the doorstep, others will be terrified to do so.

Some know that I have two fridges, one in the back room and another in the kitchen.

You have perpetually to tell them that the back milk is fed into the front and is replaced by the new a t the back.

There are some who are completely unable to grasp the concept.

One (who shall be nameless) after two abortive attempts at it, was walked by me through the procedure, and now ‘has it’.

One will fill a large bowl with metered water plus a generous helping of fairy liquid to wash one plate rather than leave it for others to deal with in the morning when there is more.

They love bubbles.

One helpfully threw out a bowl of grated cheese from the fridge when there was nothing wrong with it.

She probably thought it looked untidy.

One is so short sighted, I grab the drugs box before she can get to it, so I can do my own.

Some will greet with a cheerful remark, others will maintain a stony silence throughout.

Some will ask if there is anything more they can do for you before leaving, others wouldn’t dream of saying such a thing.

Some will leave the kitchen light on after lunch and you don’t find it till teatime.

Some will leave the gas stove on stand-by similarly, and you wonder why the place is so hot.

One filled my breakfast dish with rock hard uncooked prunes from a packet standing next to the bowl of newly cooked ones.

One took my wallet out of my handbag one Christmas night, pocketed the contents, and threw the empty wallet behind my fridge freezer, where another carer found it weeks later when looking for a missing oven glove. Let us be charitable and say she probably spent too much on Christmas presents.

They don’t like bending down and will ignore an object like a pair of scissors on the carpet until specifically asked to retrieve it.

You have to play hunt the object in the kitchen, as some of their ideas on correct places after washing up, are ingenious to say the least.

One took the last bit of cling film roll and put the empty box back on the shelf.

One, looking for the sugar, rooted about on a nearby shelf, and found an old grimy jam jar with a few grains in the bottom. These were carefully scraped up and spread on my weetabix and presented for breakfast.

Believe it or not, a second person did the same thing a few weeks later. The offending jam jar has been removed and the sugar is in a clearly marked jar on the kitchen top.

They are good at posting letters. Unlike some people, and you may be sure your letter will get there, which is comforting.

Honestly, though, they do a grand job, and I couldn’t do it. The inside of some people’s houses must be grim, and dressing and undressing old ladies must be even more so.

I give them home-made cakes from St. Peters as I am sure they never get time to make any, and they are delighted. It’s nice to give something back.

Comment: Everycare are determined to make sure that the client is served according to their wishes and would ask for regular feedback from clients on whether their care is being delivered to their absolute satisfaction. Are aim is keep the number of carers visiting a client to a minimum but some practical issues sometimes prevent this. We are not perfect but will endeavour to move heaven and earth to put something right when we make a mistake.

By Mike Frizzell Everycare Central Hants   www.everycarehants.co.uk

For those receiving Care at Home we want to make you aware of this Drug Recall. This drug is used in the treatment of Brain Tumours.

A Drug Alert has been issued, recalling some Temozolomide  (sometimes known as TMZ) capsules made by Hospira.

This follows reports of the capsules splitting and leaking powder.

If you have this medicine at home, you should not open the pack. If a capsule is damaged, you should avoid contact of the powder with your skin, eyes and nose and avoid inhaling the powder.

If you accidentally get some on your skin, wash with soap and water or in the case of contact with the eyes or nose, wash with water only. If irritation persists you should seek medical advice. You should be able to obtain an alternative prescription and get your medicine replaced.

Affected batch numbers are:
L00828 – 5 mg
L00829 – 20 mg
L00831 – 100 mg
L01031 – 250 mg

Care for the Elderly can be stressful but even more so when the loved one has Dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. Creating a safe home environment can ease some of this stress, and getting needed time away from elderly care by employing an at home care service can also help.

Creating a safe environment removes the danger and stress from at home elderly care. The hardest part in safeguarding a home for elderly care can be assessing the existing risks, identifying areas that need to be improved, and preventing wandering. The following checklist can help when planning for safe at home elderly care.

• Install grab bars in bathrooms and put non-slip bath mats in baths and shower trays. Use a handheld showerhead and shower bench.
• If necessary remove the car and or the car keys from temptation if the person should not be driving.
• Install locks on all windows and doors and if the person tends to wander out, keep them locked. Install deadbolt looks on doors that need a key to open.
• Place nightlights in the bedroom, hall and other walkways.
• Remove the locks on bathroom doors to prevent the person from accidentally locking themselves in.
• Use childproof locks on any cabinets where medicine, chemicals or dangerous items like knives or other sharp objects are kept.
• Keep walkways clutter-free and the house tidy to avoid trips and falls.
• Consider replacing loose rugs and anything else that might cause an elderly person to slip or fall.
• Install outdoor flood lighting to illuminate walkways at night.
• Have a fire extinguisher handy in the kitchen. Install an automatic shut-off switch on the cooker.
• The elderly person should carry identification medical alerts if necessary so that in the event that he or she wanders off, someone will be able to identify him or her. If the elderly person does become lost, it is important to have a recent photograph of the person on hand to show police.
• Make sure the elderly person’s financial and legal documents are in order, and kept in a secure place.
• Use an adult day care service to reduce the stress and demands of elderly care. This way you can have peace of mind knowing that a qualified, caring person is providing elderly care while you are away.

Home Care services are available to help you cope with looking after the elderly. You need to remember that you need a life as well; if you are stressed by giving all the care then the care that you provide will likely suffer. It is important that you take holidays and call in professional care when you go away.

By Mike Frizzell Everycare Central Hants  www.everycarehants.co.uk

Under the current law there is a default retirement age of 65; this means that once you turn 65 your employer can retire you. Often a person turning 65 now is not ready to retire or does not have enough pension or savings to want to retire. The Government is considering abolishing or raising the retirement age to help deal with the costs of an ageing population.

The Coalition Government is planning to raise the state pension age for men to 66 from 2016 – this is nearly 10 years earlier than the last Labour Government was planning.

As the country grapples with ever-increasing life expectancy, ministers are to also raise the possibility of extending the pension age to 70.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said the new policies were intended to “reinvigorate retirement”.

He said: “Now is absolutely the right time to live up to our responsibility to reform our outdated pension system and to take action where the previous government failed to do so.”

Millions of workers who are not saving for retirement face being enrolled in company schemes unless they opt out under the plans. Just over a third of people are thought to be currently saving into a private pension.

Michelle Mitchell, Age UK’s Charity Director, said: “The coalition must not make any rash decisions about the future of our pensions system. Before rushing through any increase to state pension age, the government must first reduce the health inequalities between rich and poor, and create a much fairer job market for older people. Failure to do so will force millions of older people, many of them poorer and with lower life expectancies, to work for longer or face another year trapped in unemployed limbo.

“Any review into bringing forward the state pension age increase must take into account the full impact on these workers. Clearly there are huge challenges ahead for the new government but now is the time to renew the fight against pensioner poverty and commit to eradicating it once and for all.”

I would comment that we are still seeing ageism in recruitment and unless this changes there will be a lot of people willing to work but unable to get gainful employment. The UK always seems to have had a problem with valuing experience. Often when there are redundancies the older workers are released in favour of keeping lower paid less experienced workers. I would want to see solid progress in the reduction of unemployed people who are over 50. The current Job Centre Plus does little to help people with senior management skills or those that were well paid.

If people want to start up a new business I found that there was no support whatsoever from a financial point of view, the Job Centre was all about finding a job not helping while you set up in business.

By Mike Frizzell Everycare (Central Hants) Ltd, www.everycarehants.co.uk

People that receive home care have their homes risk assessed for trips and falls to point out to them potential problems, but people, also, need to take responsibility for their fitness as they grow older. People need to be aware of the simple steps that can be taken to help prevent the potentially devastating consequences of a fall.

Falls remain a major cause of injury and death amongst the over 70s and account for more than 50 per cent of hospital admissions for accidental injury. Evidence shows that specific programmes for improving strength and balance can reduce the risk of falls by as much as 55 per cent. However, with one in five older people admitting that they cannot remember the last time they did any exercise, more work needs to be done to encourage older people to take exercise. In fact it is all our interests to stay fit throughout our lives and make fitness a good habit.

Michelle Mitchell, Charity Director at Age UK (the charity that is an amalgamation of Age Concern and Help the Aged), said: “Despite costing the NHS over £4.6 million each day, adding up to £1.7 billion per year, the issue of people in later life falling over is all too often dismissed as an inevitable part of the ageing process. The reality is that there are a number of things older people can do help prevent falls, such as exercises to improve strength and balance, and more should be done to promote and support this.”

Older people need to get involved with exercise classes, for more information on how you get involved visit the Age UK site fit-as-a-fiddle . The Age UK programme is called “fit as a fiddle”, the aim is to have fun and at the same time getter fit and stay fit.

There are programmes taking place in Hampshire and are being run in conjunction with U3A (University of the third age) and open to people 50 and over. Why not try out some Nordic Walking as it a good overall body workout? These courses are being funded by the National Lottery so they are being offered free to start with and with nominal cost after that.

Everycare (Central Hants) offer Care in your own Home and want to support people in living longer and healthier lives.

By Mike Frizzell  Everycare (Central Hants) Ltd www.everycarehants.co.uk

These words from Outside Left are causing me to remember that I have knuckles:

“Slowly but surely, the true picture is emerging of widespread failure involving many people in different services.“

I didn’t have a Baby P, but I had the equivalent of Baby P.  She had a longer life than Baby P, but an equally horrible death.  Baby P was only a baby; she was an 83-year old.  Baby P was neglected within his own family and by those who were charged with looking after his life; my 83-year old was never neglected within her own family, but was seriously neglected by those who were charged with looking after her life.

It’s almost 3 years on now since she was found to have suffered “sub-standard care” also known as neglect in a care home, and which resulted in her death.  A care home that was not fit for purpose.  But who cares?  Who cared about her?  I did, and I do.

There was indeed widespread failure involving many people in different services, in my own personal experience of ‘care’ aka ‘neglect’.  I’ll try to list a few of them:

1. The Local Authority;
2. the Mental Health Care of Older People Team;
3. the Social Worker working for the first time ever on behalf of older people with dementia – a locum social worker who knew nothing of the locality or of dementia.  If only she had told us that then, we might have worked out a way to help her too, but we didn’t know it then;
4. the next Social Worker  seconded to that same  MHCOP team from the LA, but who seemed to have been ‘shackled’ sufficiently to render her in total awe of her job-providers and her experience-gaining-secondment from Australia (!);
5. the extra-care sheltered housing, contracted by the Local Authority and recommended as ‘suitably suitable’ by the first Social Worker;
6. the domiciliary care agency owning and providing domiciliary care to that same extra-care sheltered housing complex, which was run in the best interests of the agency staff working there and where the main focus was on independent dying, not independent living;
7. the Assessment Ward of the Mental Health Unit via the NHS/PCT/Trust/Partnership …. changed its name so many times;
8. the Local Authority’s Adult Social Services/Housing department with particular responsibility for housing those in need of care;
9. the Local Authority’s commissioning department who are supposed to commission and contract safe residential care services;
10. the CQC / CSCI departments charged with regulating, inspecting, reporting on and ensuring the safe regulation of residential care  homes with nursing and ensuring that they are/were all above board and safely guaranteed competent to receive vulnerable elderly people with dementia;
11. the care home, who had no systems of protection in place;
12. the care home provider with a 25-year contract to provide safe services to vulnerable elderly people with dementia;
13. the Adult Protection Coordinator who could and should have helped us through the months that followed ….   …. ….
14. All of the above agencies who had not realised that there were no systems of protection in place.

I can’t begin to tell you all how it feels to list the above, and I have to make a huge effort so as to avoid a further few ‘agencies’ involved.

I’m feeling almost weak at the knees remembering and trying to create a coherently readable list of all the agencies involved.

But they all failed.  From start to finish.  Each and every one of them failed.  Failed to protect and preserve life.

Posted By Everycare Hants

As we grow older we run the risk of failing health and having to be put into a Residential Home where we are looked after in an intensive way. This comes at a large cost because we are giving up our own home so that we can afford the residential care. There is an alternative and that is to act in the prevention of failing health and remain living at home with the help of home and community care.

Louisa Jorm professor of population health at the University of Western Sydney says “People who are obese, sedentary, smokers, who reported falling in the past year or who eat little fruit or vegetables are significantly more likely to need help”

“Everyone wants to stay living in the community before moving into aged-care facilities,” Professor Jorm said.

“Home and Community Care is the first step in that process and we should have the goal of keeping them there rather than moving them into more intensive services”.

“For instance, there are very low levels of physical activity for those receiving these services, and a high proportion had falls in the last 12 months, so that’s a clear intervention point we could look at. Programs around gentle exercise could improve strength, help balance and prevent falls.”

“Home and Community Care services are much cheaper than residential aged-care and there is already intense pressure on availability, so clearly if we can offer quick and cheap interventions it would be better.”

High quality Home Care is about supplying services that encourage older people to do things for themselves.

The care needs to aim for outcomes that get people active again; if someone was able to do something in the past then they must be encouraged to do that again.

An example is meals, rather than just be delivered a meal the person should be encouraged to go shopping for their food and learn how to cook the meal for themselves. This not only gets them active but will probably result in a healthier diet.

Everycare are a home care company that works with people in preventing a decline in their health and encouraging them to get healthier and be involved in the local community

For more information contact Melanie at Everycare on 01962 842548.

Take action today to improve your life and live a more active lifestyle.

www.everycarehants.co.uk

A new independent commission will be established to advise the Government on the future funding of long-term care and the NHS will be reformed to improve patient outcomes, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley announced today.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said, “This document sets out a clear message to the NHS. That our united vision is for a healthcare system which achieves outcomes that are amongst the best in the world, and free from day-to-day political interference.

“We will cut bureaucracy and hand back power to clinicians and patients to ensure they are at the forefront of decision making about NHS services. The proposals will drive up standards of care, eliminate waste and lead to better outcomes that improve the health of the nation.”

Today’s coalition announcement sets out how the Government will push forward reform of social care. The Government will:

• establish an independent commission on the funding of long-term care, to report within a year;
• break down barriers between health and social care funding to incentivise preventative action;
• extend the greater roll-out of personal budgets to both older and disabled people and carers to give more control and purchasing power; and
• increase direct payments to carers and better community-based provision to improve access to respite care.

Care Services Minister Paul Burstow said, “Urgent reform of the social care system is at the top of our agenda. The current system is unsustainable – it cannot go on as it is. Our first step to reform is to establish an independent commission.

“The Commission on Long Term Care will be tasked with delivering a sustainable settlement, which is a fair partnership between the state and the individual. We’ll set out further details and the terms of reference soon.”

The Government has also today announced that it will not be commencing the provisions in the Personal Care at Home Act, 2010 relating to free care at home. However, the Government will be considering what more can be done on re-ablement and carers’ breaks in the light of available resources.