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/.