Care and Quality Update
Article by Sandra Stark, Director of Care and Quality, for Welcome Home, Issue 8.
January is always a good time to reflect upon the previous year and review plans for the new year. 2018 saw the quality of Avery’s care, service and staff members being recognised by our peers with a multitude of national awards for our programmes and for the skills and expertise of individual team members. We can all be very proud of what we do to deliver care and service with a difference and the benefits that these bring to our residents and their families.
Looking forward, we expect 2019 to be an exciting and challenging year. A range of new government and policy documents will shape changes in how we provide care in the future. These include: The delayed Social Care Green Paper, which will deal not only with a range of proposals on sustainable funding but also issues such as integration with health and other services, support for family carers, workforce, and technological developments; The new Liberty Protection Safeguards (LPS) which will replace the current Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) and which protects the rights of people who do not have the mental capacity to make decisions about their care; plus practice changes such as the International Dysphagia Diet Standardisation Initiative (IDDSI), which makes changes to how we provide diets for people with special needs.
Internally we will be focusing on a variety of projects to further improve our care and service. We will be completing the rollout of the Electronic Medicines Record (e-MAR) at the beginning of the year, and in January we start the formal introduction of our new Electronic Care Plan (ECarePlan) which has been a great success in our six pilot homes.
The new Lead Community Nurse model pilot will begin in the new year and the introduction of our sector leading ReConnect programme for people living with dementia will be gathering pace, with new staff training programmes being introduced. So there is much to look forward to and we will share progress with you in future editions of our Welcome Home magazine.
