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.