Consultations

3 November 2008

There are three important documents on my desk this morning two of which are consultations:

· Ministry of Justice

Reviewing the Mental Capacity Act 2005: forms, supervision and fees
This consultation is specifically looking at Lasting Powers of Attorney forms, Supervision by the Public Guardian and the Office of the Public Guardian and Court of Protection fees.

You can access the consultation documents at www.publicguardian.gov.uk/

The consultation ends on 15 January 2009.

· Care Quality Commission (CQC)

Enforcement policy and guidance for trusts on registering in relation to Healthcare Associated Infection (HCAI)

This is a consultation exercise for the NHS and private hospitals but it is well worth us looking at it to form a view of the position of the Care Quality Commission on enforcement.

www.cqc.org.uk

The consultation ends on 16 January 2009.

· Commission for Social Care Inspection
CSCI have issued a review of the eligibility criteria for social care called “Cutting the Cake Fairly”. A document worth reading I think.
www.csci.org.uk

Any feedback that you wish to give to us can be emailed to info@nca.gb.com.

National Care Associations Annual Conference and Exhibition

3 November 2008

Here at the office we are just back from our annual conference. We really enjoyed the conference and we hope that everyone who attended did too.

We had 27 exhibitors including our sponsors (check out our sponsors page http://www.nca.gb.com/sponsors.asp). Our exhibitors included Barclays Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, Boots, Hextalls and 3663. For a full list visit our website http://www.nca.gb.com/.

The highlights of the conference included a visit by the new Minister of State Phil Hope MP. I was very interested to hear what he had to say and I certainly got the impression that he wants to hear our point of view. I am delighted to say that he agreed to meet a delegation of our Learning Disability service provider members. If you wish to know how to become part of our delegation please send an email to us at info@nca.gb.com.

We were also pleased to welcome to Conference Baroness Barbara Young the Chairmen of the Care Quality Commission. She gave an outline of what she is hoping CQC can achieve and we certainly enjoyed meeting her. For more information on the CQC visit http://www.cqc.org.uk/.
A very welcome speaker was Peter Hay, the Director of Adult Social Services for Birmingham and the Treasurer of the Association of Adult Social Services. We certainly appreciated his style and look forward to meeting him again in the near future.

There was so much going on at Conference and you can check out some of the speeches by going to our website http://www.nca.gb.com/. These can be found in our features section.

We also held two social functions, the first at the eve of conference event, where we were raising money for the Marie Curie Hospice in memory of a long serving member of staff. With the help of our amazing sponsors, exhibitors and delegates we raised a whopping £500.

On the following evening we held a fantastic dinner dance and due to the number of prizes donated for the charity fundraiser we had a second raffle and we raised an additional £1100. Thank you again sponsors, exhibitors and delegates alike for all of your contributions and congratulations to all the winners. A list of all the prizes and winners can be found on our website http://www.nca.gb.com/.

On the first morning of conference our Chairman Nadra Ahmed launched our new logo which you can see on the home page of the web site. We look forward to welcoming you to National Care Association’s new website. We have redesigned the website to make it easier for users to find their way around. The web address is still the same but the content just a little different. Check it out at http://www.nca.gb.com/.

My presentation at Childford Hall Vineyard on 17th September 2008

Following on from my presentation at Chilford Hall Vineyard on 17th September 2008, the following link is for the speaking notes that I used as requested by members of the audience.

http://www.nca.gb.com/ See NEWS FLASH.

If you have any further queries, please do not hesitate to contact me on info@nca.gb.com.

Sheila

June 2008 Update

· On the 2nd of June I attended the launch of National Care Homes week organised by Caring Business. The launch was held at the Marriott Hotel in Central London. There were many familiar faces at the launch and a panel of speakers including Ivan Lewis MP, Stephen O’Brien MP, Norman Lamb MP and Dame Denise Platt.

I know that many members of NCA held events during the week and raised awareness of the excellent care provided in care homes.

· On the 3rd of June I met with Yoonoos Jeetoo who is a member of the Board of Directors of NCA. Yoonoos provides care for younger adults with a learning disability and he and I met to discuss the number of issues that many providers of services for younger adults are currently facing. Many of these issues of course relate to funding. We also hear from members providing these specialist services about the pressures being placed on them to deregister as a provider of care in a home and become a provider of supported living services.
Yoonoos and I agreed to organise a seminar in September aimed at bringing together a group of 50 providers of services to younger adults to discuss the challenges that are being faced by providers, whether this could lead to a detrimental impact for service users and if necessary to agree an action plan to raise public awareness of the impact of public policy on care for service users with a learning disability.

If you are interested in attending the seminar please contact NCA on 02078317090.

· On 5 June I attended and spoke at the conference of the Kent Care Homes Association held in Ashford. I have been invited to speak at this conference every year for the last 5 or 6 years and it is a date that I very much enjoy especially as I meet old friends as well as meeting people I have never met before. As always this year’s conference was excellent and well attended with an audience of people keen to learn about the latest developments from a wide variety of speakers.

· On 6 June I attended the first meeting of the CSCI National Quality Board. This Board which I was pleased to be invited to be a member of reviews the outcomes of the quality ratings system launched by CSCI this year. Part of the remit of the Board is to look at statistics relating to star ratings and to review the outcomes of appeals etc. I enjoyed the first meeting at which the majority of attendees were from CSCI. I robustly put forward the view that there may be concerns for smaller providers about complaining or appealing a decision of CSCI due to concerns about what might happen next.

We did agree to consider this at a future meeting so I would be very interested to hear member’s views about (in confidence of course).

· On 9 June I was invited to lunch by Jeremy Huband of the Royal Bank of Scotland at their corporate dining room at Childs Bank in the Strand. Banks are renowned for their hospitality but on this occasion I had to be restrained as I was recording an interview with BBC Radio a little later. The programme was File on 4 and was about the use of drugs in care of people with dementia and was broadcast on a Sunday morning. I have been amazed at the number of people who heard the programme.

My position on this subject is quite clear, care homes handle medication but it is Doctors that prescribe medication and the ongoing criticism of care homes in relation to drugs and dementia care is I believe unfair. It is Doctors that should be questioned about prescribing practices.

· On 11 June NCA held its last regional seminar of the tear in Northampton. Although it was a relatively small gathering I know that we all really enjoyed the day working with a group of well informed home owners and managers.

· On 12 June I attended the 40th anniversary reception of RNHA. I was really pleased to have been invited and to have the chance to meet so many old friends. Congratulations to RNHA!

· On 18 June I had a meeting with Darren Lockley and his colleague from Electrolux. As I am sure you know one of the Conditions of Registration within the new Health and Social Care Bill will relate to the prevention of infection and Darren and I had a first exploratory meeting to discuss how we and other colleagues can work together to help our members to meet this condition of registration. I will keep you informed of the progress we make.

· On 22 and 23 June I visited with representatives of the NCA affiliated Association in Bolton and on the 23rd spoke at a conference organised by the local authority about Dignity in Care. Providers, service user representatives, the Council and the PCT have joined together to do a great deal of work to ensure dignity fro service users in receipt of both health and social care.

May 2008 Update

A lot of our time lately has been taken up with organising National Care Association’s Annual Conference and Exhibition which is being held at the Thistle Hotel in Brighton on 29 and 30 October. Everything feels very right about this venue which is on the sea front and the hotel facilities are very good including the pool!

Cheryl, Claire and I have had to go back to the hotel more than once to identify more exhibition space due to the high level of interest in the event from commercial organisations.
We have just heard that the Minister for Social Care, Ivan Lewis MP has agreed to speak at Conference for the third successive year. We are of course delighted because, with so much going on particularly with the new Care Quality Commission due to become operational in 2009, we want to hear his latest thinking.

I returned on 15 May from a week’s holiday in Spain. I went with a friend to practice our newly learnt golfing skills but it rained most of the time we were away while the UK basked in a heat wave so it’s good to be back!

Today Nadra, Peter Grose our solicitor and I went to meet with the Chairman of the Houses of Parliament Joint Human Rights Committee, Andrew Dismore MP. This was not an easy meeting and certainly Mr Dismore and ourselves whilst wanting the best for people in receipt of social care are a very long way apart on how that can be achieved.

On 20 May 2008 I flew to Vienna with Nadra and Christine Ferrier to attend the second European Conference of the International Association of Homes and Services for the Ageing (IAHSA). NCA is a member of IAHSA and as always all three of us really enjoyed the conference but it is the contact with people from other Countries that is the real success of such Conferences.

Nadra and I had attended the first European Conference in 2006 and this year it was notable that there were many more delegates from the Eastern European Countries. Learning of the many challenges that they face certainly puts into perspective developments here in the UK.
A Date for Your Diary. The next international conference of IAHSA will be in London on 19 - 22 July 2009. Both Nadra and I are part of the organising committee and it is going to be a huge event with more than 1000 delegates expected.

April Update

On 15 April we held a seminar at the Dagenham and Redbridge football club.

We had an excellent turn out at the seminar and were able to continue our consultation with providers about the star rating system. We have collected a huge amount of comment now and I will begin work on a report at the beginning of July. Needless to say the lack of consistency between inspectors is one of the headline stories.
We were delighted at the end of the day when we were asked to return at an early opportunity.

On 17 April we held a meeting between our Board of Directors and Alan Buckle from our new PR company. This was a very fruitful meeting with a strategy identified for the coming year.

On 22 April I had a day of real contrasts. During the day a Board meeting took place here in the London Office and then at 5pm I had been invited to a seminar at the BMA. The seminar was looking at the role of carers (all carers paid and unpaid). The seminar was chaired by the Princess Royal and attendees included Ivan Lewis MP (the Minister), Fiona Phillips and many other major players in care. I was challenged by the discussion that took place particularly how family carers can be trained to deal with the many challenges that they face in caring for a family member. I would be very pleased to hear from anyone who has any ideas about this particular challenge.

The next day I spoke at a seminar in Eastbourne organised by Barclays Bank. This was a very well attended event with a high level of interests in all the latest developments.

I had been invited to attend this event by Care Asset Management who NCA has worked closely with for many years. Advisers at care fee funding specialist, Care Asset Management are among the first to be awarded the new for their skills in advising older people.
The new accreditation aims to recognise advisers with the necessary qualifications and empathetic skills to understand the needs of older clients and the specific financial issues which affect them.

Continuing Care and the Annual Conference

On 7 April I attended a meeting at the Department of Health with David Behan the Director General of Social Care. The Chief Officers of the other three national associations were also present.

This was a robust meeting with strong feelings expressed on all sides much to my surprise. Continuing Care was one of the important issues raised and I had the opportunity to raise NCA’s concerns about what is happening in the Learning Disabilities sector around contracts.

Wherever we have gone this year we have encountered care home owners caring for people with learning disabilities who are extremely anxious about changes that are being made to contracts without the degree of consultation that they or NCA believe to be acceptable.

I am currently looking at arranging a national conference for this care group to give them a platform for a clear understanding to be gained of exactly what is going on around the Country in the learning disability field. It would also helpful I think to arrange for someone to come from the Department of Health so that we can hear their message and perhaps more importantly so that they can hear our message.

More news about this within 14 days.

On Monday morning I received a letter from the Minister Ivan Lewis’s office telling us that he had accepted our invitation to speak at Conference in Brighton in October. I am absolutely delighted. There is so much going on in social care at the moment particularly around the new Inspectorate and with another Green Paper due to be published in early summer.

On 10 April I met with Dr Keri Thomas from the Gold Standards Framework which seeks to enable a “gold standard” of care for all people nearing the end of their lives.

This was an extremely constructive meeting where we discussed the work that has been achieved so far and how care homes can become involved. Up till now the work has been undertaken primarily with GPs and nursing homes.

I invited Dr Thomas to speak at our Conference in Brighton at the end of October when we hope she will be able to bring us up to date with her framework and all care homes.

Care Show

On 31 March we made final preparations for the Care Show in Bournemouth. We always participate in this exhibition. I then set off for Bournemouth as I had been invited by the Care Consortium to a dinner at the Royal Bath Hotel.

There were about twelve people at the dinner. I sat next to Martin Green. Also there was Sylvie Silva from the National Association for Providers of Activities for Older People. Discussion at dinner was led by Funmi Majekodunmi the editor of Caring Business.

This was a really interesting event as well as a delicious dinner. We not only talked about what is going on at the moment in the care sector, we also discussed our hopes and aspirations for the future.

The next morning the Care Show started. NCA shared a stand with our sponsors Fireco, CHIS and IPA purchasing. We had a really successful two days with crowds of visitors coming to the stand.

I led a seminar on the first morning about the latest developments in social care. Events such as this give me a real opportunity to meet many of our members and I really enjoy that.
When I went to Australia last year I met the founders of the Aged Care Channel. This is a TV channel that provides training for the care sector in Australia. The guys from the channel had asked to see me as they were considering extending their work to the UK. I was very impressed by the channel in Australia and thought that there might well be a market in the UK.
The two directors of the company came to the UK in February to try to gauge a possible level of interest. They appear to have been very encouraged by the reception they received and one of them is in the UK now meeting more people. I was able to have dinner with him in Bournemouth. If anyone is interested in receiving information about the Aged Care Channel please let us know and we will put you in touch with a representative.

On the second day of the exhibition I met some more Learning Disability providers along with our solicitor Peter Grose to try to agree a plan of action to engage with Councils about contracts.
There seems to be a growing number of providers of services for people with a learning disability who are unhappy with proposed new contracts in their area. The major area of discontent being that new contracting arrangements are being arranged and proposed without the engagement of providers of care. I hope that we are going to be able to find a way forward that is acceptable to everyone.

Mental Capacity Act Awareness Raising Conference and SCIE Seminars

We held another Mental Capacity Act Awareness Raising Conference on 26 March in Leeds. Although the weather on the day was atrocious and several people called to say they couldn’t make it because of accidents and hold ups on the roads in many ways this was the most interesting of the conferences that we delivered for the Department because of the level of engagement and discussion there was between the presenters and the delegates.

Some really significant discussion took place about the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards which are due to be introduced in the coming year. The debate reflected the level of concern there is in the sector. I do believe that it is the advice of the legal profession that will decide the view that the sector takes on this issue. I think the Department of Health are going to have to give much clearer advice than they have given so far.

I left Leeds to travel to Gloucester for a conference there the next day. The weather was appalling as I travelled on the Manchester ring road when I received a call from the Minister. I don’t want you to think that I regularly receive phone calls from Ministers because I most certainly do not. It must be at least 5 years since I had a phone call from a Minister last. The Minister rang to tell me about an announcement he was to make the next day about Human Rights legislation and care homes. I most certainly welcome the clarity which I hope will be bought to the situation. It remains clear to NCA that Human Rights legislation is intended to protect people from abuse by the State (public authorities). We believe that should remain the case.

On 27 March I spoke at the Gloucestershire Care Providers Association Conference at a most beautiful country house hotel. There was a very good turn out of care providers. In the afternoon the conference broke down into seminars dealing with the various categories of care.
I was part of the Learning Disability seminar. This was the fourth meeting I have had with Learning Disability providers this year and at each of the meetings I have struck by the level of concern and anxiety about contractual changes being proposed by local Councils where there has been a failure to consult in a meaningful way with the providers. This is really disappointing but we will continue to support providers wherever they are based to achieve a fair solution to the challenges they are facing.

Introduction

I guess I should say “welcome to my blog” but I feel rather a fraud because until recently I had no idea what a blog was!

Anyway this is the NCA blog and NCA intends to use it to keep you up to date with everything that NCA is doing on behalf of its members.

Last week for instance on Monday Nadra Ahmed, NCA’s Chairman and I were in Brussels at a European meeting about the prevention of abuse of older people.

We were invited to attend by the European Union and as happens on these occasions the EU were extremely generous in paying all the costs of our visit to Brussels.

There were about 100 representatives at the Conference from all parts of Europe and it was extremely interesting to hear the approaches taken by the various countries. We were the only care provider representatives from the United Kingdom that attended the conference as far as I could tell.

One of the suggestions that we made was that there should be a uniform approach to CRB checks throughout the European Community. The conference was extremely useful as well because we had the chance to talk to a number of people from the UK that we might not otherwise have met.

The following day we were at a Mental Capacity Act awareness raising seminar that we held for the Department of Health at Bath Racecourse. This event was very well attended.

NCA is a member of International Association of Homes and Services for the Ageing (IAHSA). One of the real benefits that we have found since becoming a member two years ago is the understanding of what is happening in social care in other countries.

For instance when I was on holiday in Australia last year I was able to meet people that I had first made contact with at a conference in Malta.

The thing that always strikes me is that there is much to learn from each other but so many of the challenges that we face are same wherever we are in the world especially issues around funding.

IAHSA’s next international conference will be held in London on 20-22 July 2009. I am part of the organizing committee and last Thursday there was a meeting at the QE II conference centre in Westminster.

A minimum of 700 delegates are expected to attend in 2009 so this will be quite an organizational feat.

In the meantime the IAHSA European Conference will be held in Vienna on 22-23 May 2008. For more information about the Conference go to www.iahsa.net/ and follow the links on the right hand side.

You may remember that in a recent newsletter we mentioned the opportunity of care staff or manager exchanges with other members of IAHSA. That offer remains on the table and if anyone is interested please contact me direct at the moment.

Within a few days I hope to be able to post photos on this site as well as text.

I will be very happy to receive your responses to any report on this site.

NCA Annual Conference to be held at the Thistle Hotel Brighton

Watch this space for uptodate information on NCA's Annual Conference. Can you afford not to be there?.................... Go to www.nca.gb.com for information on last years annual conference and to register your interest please send an email to: info@nca.gb.com.

NCA's regional seminars

Watch this space for information on National Care Association's regional seminars...........................

Coming soon Sheila Scott OBE's Blog

Watch this space for up to date information from National Care Association's Chief Executive Sheila Scott OBE about what the NCA is doing within the sector.