Let’s Talk – Care Homes and Delayed Discharge

Posted on November 8, 2016 by Stephen Martineau

Bev Evans and Norman Crump, both of Lancaster University Management School, report from a recent meeting where participants discussed the transition from hospital to care home. (913 words)

According to the National Audit Office (2016), between 2013 and 2015, official delayed transfers of care rose 31 per cent and in 2015 accounted for 1.15 million bed days – 85 per cent of patients occupying these beds were aged over 65. Since 2010, waits for beds in nursing homes increased by 63 per cent. Across Morecambe Bay University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (MBUHT) waiting for a care home place can be a significant cause of delay.

In early October, Cumbria Registered Social Care Managers’ Network, Kendal Integrated Care Community (ICC) and MBUHT convened a special ‘Let’s Talk’ discussion group which brought together local care home managers, social workers, hospital discharge coordinators, ward staff and nurse practitioners from the community. The aim of the meeting was to explore how the transition from hospital to a care home could be improved. ‘Let’s Talk’ is a specially facilitated session delivered by King’s College London, Lancaster University, Dignity in Dementia and the South Lakes Registered Social Care Managers Network. Meetings are designed to enable participants to see issues from each other’s perspectives and to afford time to critically reflect on a particular ‘wicked issue’. Continue reading →

Data and Debate – reflections on the SSRG Annual Workshop

Posted on April 17, 2015 by

Caroline Norrie, Research Fellow at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit in the Policy Institute at King’s, was at the Social Services Research Group Annual Workshop this week. (801 words)

This year’s Social Services Research Group (SSRG) Annual Workshop, held at the London School of Economics (LSE) on 15 April was a particularly thought-provoking event. Entitled ‘Evidencing Service Improvement for Vulnerable Children and Adults’, the workshop featured an expertly chosen group of speakers whose presentations stimulated animated discussion from the floor. With the Care Act coming on stream and the increased drive for integration, participants, who were predominantly social care managers with responsibilities for data and organisational performance, enjoyed a great opportunity to discuss service re-figuration and its measurement. Continue reading →

New models of social care

Posted on March 12, 2015 by

The Centre for Policy on Ageing (CPA) and Co-operatives UK arranged a roundtable event on 18 February 2015 to foster greater understanding and consider the development of social care co-operatives. Dave Martin (an associate with CPA) reports from the gathering. (753 words)

‘Hardly a month goes by without another scare story about aspects of our health and care services. Is there a democratically accountable ownership model for health and care services that could make a difference? Could the active membership and co-operative ownership of workers, service users, volunteers and family members rebuild public trust in services and put an end to cruelty and neglect through a socially inclusive solution where the system of care is owned by the recipients?

In a growing number of countries, from Europe to Canada and Japan, diverse co-operative models of social care are expanding. We believe these approaches can be further developed in the UK and that they would benefit the lives of vulnerable people by empowering them directly in decisions that affect their care.’—Pat Conaty (Research Associate, Co-operatives UK) in The Guardian, 4 July 2014.

The roundtable event was attended by a diverse group of people, described as three circles of interest—first, people who had been involved with the co-operative movement for some time, secondly people seeking to develop (or convert to) a co-operative model for the delivery of care, looking for support and assistance, and thirdly policymakers and commissioners sniffing around—is this the way for the future? Continue reading →

Risk, Safeguarding and Personal Budgets: exploring relationships and identifying good practice

Posted on December 12, 2014 by

Dr Martin Stevens is Senior Research Fellow at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit in the Policy Institute at King’s. (900 words)

Published today are our findings from this timely NIHR-SSCR funded study, which aimed to provide evidence about the impact of using different forms of Personal Budgets on risks of abuse, to explore practice responses to the increased emphasis on using Personal Budgets and the experiences of Personal Budget holders who had been the subject of a safeguarding referral (suspected abuse or neglect). This collaborative research (undertaken by researchers from King’s, the University of York and Coventry University) was driven by our awareness of contradictory perceptions held by practitioners and other researchers. We had heard views that people on Direct Payments (one main form of Personal Budgets) were more at risk of abuse than other social care users, but on the other hand that the increased control offered by Direct Payments was a protective factor. In order to provide some evidence to address these contradictions, we re-analysed national and local data on safeguarding referrals and take-up of the different forms of Personal Budget. Continue reading →

Towards a new national learning disability employment strategy

Posted on September 29, 2014 by

Stephen Martineau is a researcher at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit in the Policy Institute at King’s. (782 words)

There is a flurry of policy activity in the field of learning disabilities and employment at the moment. Last Wednesday’s Summit on the topic, hosted by the British Institute of Learning Disabilities (BILD) in Birmingham, followed close on the heels of a run of associated consultation events. Led by a Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) civil servant, with the Department of Health (DH) also in the room, the focus of the meeting was a new national learning disability employment strategy. This is to be in final draft form by November, with a set of four learning and sharing events to follow, and sign-off by Mark Harper, Minister for Disabled People, expected in January 2015. Other indications that the topic of learning disabilities is ‘hot’ in Whitehall and Westminster, as DWP’s Simon Francis asserted on the day, include: the recent appointment of a Special Educational Needs Tsar (Lee Scott MP); the revamp of the GOV.UK website for potential employers of people with learning disabilities; and, a commitment to put much more of the information in this domain into easy read format.

It is too early to say much about the new employment strategy for people with learning disabilities in detail. The talk is of opening up a new funding stream, but quite what shape this will take (and whether, for example, it will entail new pilots)—this isn’t being discussed openly yet. Continue reading →

Challenge the CQC

Posted on June 26, 2014 by

Caroline Norrie, Research Fellow at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit at KIng’s College London, and Esther Njoya, Research Intern at the Unit, report on a meeting held earlier this month at which the Care Quality Commission (CQC) was put on the spot by parliamentarians, professionals and the public.

The public had a chance to ‘challenge the CQC’ at an event held on 11 June at the House of Commons. This was an opportunity for the public, patients, and health and social care professionals to question representatives of the Care Quality Commission (CQC) about its work and especially the proposed changes to the regulation of primary and integrated care.

Held under the aegis of the All-Party Parliamentary Health Group, the meeting was chaired by Dr Sarah Wollaston MP with a panel made up of Chairman of the CQC, David Prior and Chief Inspector of General Practice, CQC, Prof Steve Field. Dr Sarah Wollaston opened the meeting with a brief description of the role of the CQC as independent of government and committed to transparency and the integration of health and social care.

Chairman of the CQC, David Prior

Following the Winterbourne View TV exposé and Serious Case Review the CQC has been making significant changes. These are summarised in its strategy, Raising standards, putting people first – Our strategy for 2013 to 2016, which it has been consulting on. As part of a new inspection regime, the five new key domains the CQC will be inspecting in all services are safety, effectiveness, caring, responsiveness to people’s needs and leadership. The new style inspections are being trialled in hospitals, mental health and community health services, and, since April 2014, in adult social care services and GP practices.

As has been widely reported, inspections are now being carried out by specialists (including experts by experience) within professional areas rather than generalists. Services will soon be graded as outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate. The CQC hopes this new grading system will encourage service improvement. The CQC has also undertaken a review of care homes and found about 3,000 care homes with no qualified registered managers; in some of these the owners have been penalised. Finally, a new aim of the CQC is to understand and measure service users’ experiences of integrated working. Final plans will be published in September 2014 and come into effect in October 2014. This meeting was part of CQC’s strategy to engage the public in this change process.

Professor Field outlined in more detail his vision for inspection in primary care, which includes improved access to care for vulnerable people (such as homeless people, people with learning disabilities, and sex workers, among others). The CQC will use ‘levers’ to improve integrated care and its commissioning. The aim is to ‘celebrate good practice as well as shining the light on poor practice.’ He outlined all the areas that are covered by CQC primary care inspection including GPs, dentistry, mobile doctors (e.g. the 111 service) medicine management, prisons and safeguarding.

The majority of this forum was taken up with discussion around a wide range of questions from the audience.

Baroness Hollins, a prominent Learning Disabilities (LD) campaigner, urged the panel to introduce levers to ensure GP practices fulfilled the regulation of noting when a patient has a learning disability. She asked whether the CQC had made any headway in implementing the recommendations set out in the Confidential Inquiry into premature deaths of people with learning disabilities (CIPOLD). She stated that 37% of the deaths of learning disabled people were preventable—making this a discriminated against group. Prof Steve Field replied he was taking notice of the comments and that such implementation might be possible using intelligent monitoring (a new system being developed to combine informal intelligence and formal performance management data).

Several service users and carers used this meeting to complain about lack of joined-up services and inequality between London boroughs in the provision of mental health services. Suggestions were made about providing crisis phone lines, which might reduce hospital admissions. The speakers took notice of these comments and also offered the audience information about making complaints to local Health and Well-being Boards (HWBs) and the CQC call centre in Newcastle.

A representative from Healthwatch asked about links with the CQC and how to make the most of their work (e.g. their role in being able to enter and view services) while avoiding duplication of roles. Prof Steve Field answered that the CQC was focused on ‘listening to people on the ground’ and the HWBs acted like the ‘eyes and ears of the CQC’ and so both organisations should be working together. It was not entirely clear how these mixed metaphors would work locally,

Concerns specifically relating to GPs were raised—for example, out-of-hours services, the trend for phone rather than face-to-face consultations, and regulation of single-doctor practices. Service users asked when electronic patient records were going to be introduced and whether patients would have permission to check and amend their own records. Questions were also asked about regulation of follow-up-care and post-discharge services and insurance for independent midwives.

Another representative from a Healthwatch organisation, who declared that they were willing to support individuals who wanted to expose acts of neglect and abuse in care homes as whistleblowers or witnesses, asked whether there were avenues that such organisations could use to effectively collaborate with the CQC. She observed that they could contribute to the CQC’s work in providing oversight roles for inspections, regulation and monitoring, as it was evident to her that the CQC had overlooked previous cases of abuse scandals—for example the case in The Old Deanery home, which was shown by Panorama at a time when CQC was actually carrying out an ongoing inspection. Professor Field replied by saying that it was unfortunate that such an incident had happened while still under their scrutiny, but that at the time they had relied on information from the management of the home. He reiterated that the CQC welcomes the contribution of Healthwatch organisations who are able to provide information.

In contrast, Paul Beresford MP noted his concern about over-regulation and suggested closer working together of the General Medical Council (GMC) inspections and the CQC. Professor Field replied that this was in the pipeline, and there were general murmurs of approbation to this news.

A representative from the care home sector then put forward the case for private providers. He said there was a danger that good quality operators offering services for people with long-term conditions would be driven out of the sector due to the growth of regulation. He called for increased funding and more training to be made available for care home managers. Prof Steve Field agreed, but noted that care homes should also take some responsibility for training and ensuring that their members of staff have care home management skills and professional qualifications.

One member of the audience questioned whether the CQC has capacity to undertake this more stringent inspection regime. Professor Field replied that the CQC was recruiting more staff and that it did have capacity to undertake the work. The best providers will only be regulated once every two years, rather than annually as is currently the case.

As researchers currently involved in projects about adult safeguarding, this meeting provided an interesting insight into the CQC’s vision for regulation. Plans for the CQC to carry out more stringent inspections of social care services and to use their powers to encourage more effective joined-up working across health and social care sounded highly positive aspirations—although the policy shift to more infrequent inspections of the ‘best homes’ needs to be tempered by an acknowledgement of the risks of such homes being quick to deteriorate.

Caroline Norrie is Research Fellow at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit at King’s College London. Esther Njoya is a Research Intern at the Unit.

Following a pathway to impact

Posted on June 23, 2014 by

Valerie Lipman

The Social Care Workforce Research Unit is part of the Policy Institute @ King’s, which is furthering the cause of evidence-informed policy and practice. Valerie Lipman, a social gerontologist and a postdoc Intern at the Unit, reports on an event which examined the questions that arise where academia, funders, policy-makers, and practitioners meet.

I went to a great panel discussion last week: ‘The impact of impact: who are we researching for?’. The event, the last of the year organised by KISS-DTC* was moderated by BBC journalist Mark Easton. Lots of talking about the history of research, its purpose, why do we do it, what’s meant to happen to it when done, and who cares? And that for me is the critical question. Who cares, or rather who do I want to care about the research I’ve done? Why would you bother doing social science research unless you wanted something to be different as a result? This view has been the order of the day for some time now, and the proof is in how money is made available for research, and the ability of those carrying out the research to disseminate and inform others.

From their different perspectives three panellists presented the case about why impact matters. In the academic corner we had Dame Janet Finch, chair of the social sciences panel for the REF, arguing a strong moral case that researchers have a responsibility to make their research available and that the ‘impact’ element of the REF is here to stay. Aileen Murphie, Director, DCLG & Local Government VFM, promoted the need for evidence-based policy, though as members of the audience argued this can result in favouring government priorities occluding an openness to new ideas. And representing a position between the academic and government worlds was Anthony Tomei, former Director of the Nuffield Foundation: the voice of independence, risk taker in what research to support and an advocate of the importance of quality research that can effect change.

The time when research was allowed to be an expression of freedom and a search for the new—an opportunity to delve into the unknown and emerge with the prize that would change the thinking and actions of others to make a better world—seems to have passed. On the other hand I’ve worked with people in university research departments who’ve never thought about what the purpose of their research was. It was the job of others to interpret the findings and take it further. Obviously, you shouldn’t know the answers to the questions before you start the research or skew your questions to meet what you want it to show—’policy-based evidence’ as someone at the meeting described it. But there must be a way of deciding at the start that you’ll want the results of the research to matter, so how about building in processes at the outset that stimulate debate as you go along … following a ‘pathway to impact’, as Janet Finch said, not merely waiting till the obligatory conference and a couple of academic papers at the end?

Valerie Lipman was recently awarded a PhD by the Centre for Ageing at the University of Southampton. She is a postdoc Intern at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit, developing material from her doctorate for publication here at King’s.

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*KISS-DTC = King’s Interdisciplinary Social Science Doctoral Training Centre

Personal Budgets for adult social care and support: are homeless people eligible?

Posted on February 19, 2014 by

With the Care Bill entering the report stage in the House of Commons shortly, Michelle Cornes urges us to take part in the debate over what constitutes eligible need in relation to adult social care and support. Dr Cornes is Senior Research Fellow at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit (SCWRU) at King’s College London and recently completed a major ESRC-funded project examining Multiple Exclusion Homelessness. Her work forms part of the Homelessness Research Programme at SCWRU.

As funding for Supporting People services continues to shrink (see Patrick Butler’s article in The Guardian, 12 February 2014) it is timely to revisit the question as to whether homeless people are eligible for publicly funded social care support (e.g. personal budgets secured through adult social care) or personal health budgets. The Care Bill currently going through Parliament heralds some positive changes that may serve to open the door to this funding stream which has, de facto, mainly been closed to homeless people. As the law currently stands ‘homeless people’ are not eligible for support (though ‘homeless people’ with mental health, physical health, and drug and alcohol problems may be). The Care Bill will remove ‘eligible’ and ‘ineligible’ groups so that any adult with any level of need will have a right to an assessment (Department of Health 2013: 1.9).

Under the existing guidance, the purpose of a community care assessment is to assess need in the round. The guidance is clear that needs relating to social inclusion and participation should be seen as just as important as needs relating to personal care (Department of Health 2010: 61). It is perhaps worth noting that housing related support can be purchased using a personal budget from adult social care. In Scotland, 11% of direct payments and self-directed support packages in 2012 encompassed this element (Rosengard et al. 2011).

Once a community care assessment has been carried out, a decision must then be taken by the local authority (on a case-by-case basis) about whether the needs identified are eligible needs. The eligibility framework is graded into four bands which describe the seriousness of the risk to independence or well-being (Department of Health 2010: 54). This considers issues such as the ability to carry out personal care or domestic routines, whether vital involvement in work, education or learning can be sustained and if vital family and other social roles and responsibilities can be undertaken. Risks are banded as low, moderate, substantial and critical with many councils only meeting those needs identified as substantial or above.

Making decisions about which banding to apply and ultimately, who is eligible for a ‘personal budget’ is open to professional interpretation. With increasing austerity, the regulator has taken issue with those local authorities identified as being too restrictive. For example, Michael Mandelstam highlighted a recent case in which a local authority visited a woman at home, assessed her as managing her own personal care and closed the case—having first recorded that she was unkempt, her knickers were around her knees, there was evidence of faeces on the floor and she was not taking her medication (2013: 123).

Evidence from the Multiple Exclusion Homelessness Research Programme (Cornes et al. 2011) and other studies suggests that people who are homeless fare particularly badly in getting their needs banded correctly, often struggling to access an assessment at all. There is evidence that homelessness is written off as ‘lifestyle choice’ or as a housing responsibility, with the ‘substantial’ and ‘critical’ risks posed to well-being ignored or overlooked. The notion that homelessness poses mostly low to moderate risks to well-being is most clearly challenged by the startling statistic that the average age of death of a homeless person is 47 (43 for a homeless woman) as compared to 77 for the general population. The Care Bill (page 2) makes explicit the need to challenge discriminatory practices so that decisions about the individual are made having regard to all the individual’s circumstances and are not based only on the individual’s age or appearance or aspect of the individual’s behaviour which might lead others to make unjustified assumptions.

The problems with the way eligibility criteria are being applied are acknowledged by the Coalition Government. The Care Bill will introduce a national minimum threshold for adult care and support and there are plans to replace the current ‘Fair Access to Care’ (FACS) eligibility criteria in 2015. A new description of what is eligible need will be put forward for consultation in 2014 and a discussion document is already in the public domain (Department of Health 2013). I would urge all those working in the homelessness sector and those interested in challenging social exclusion to respond to this consultation. Without doing so there is the danger that homeless people will continue to be denied the support they are entitled to and, given what we know is happening to Supporting People services, possibly robbed of the little support many already have.

Dr Michelle Cornes is Senior Research Fellow at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit. She recently completed a major study on Multiple Exclusion Homelessness funded by the ESRC. For work on homelessness at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit at King’s see our Homelessness Research Programme pages.

The Social Care Workforce Research Unit is part of the King’s Policy Institute (KPI) at King’s College London. The Institute is involved in the translation of academic research at King’s to the benefit of policy and practice.

References

Butler, P. (2014) ‘If supported housing is cut, we will see more rough sleeping and more crime’. The Guardian, 12 February 2014.

Cornes, M., Joly, L, Manthorpe, J., O’Halloran, S., and Smythe, R. (2011) ‘Working together to address Multiple Exclusion Homelessness’, Social Policy and Society, 10(4): 513-522.

Department of Health (2010) ‘Prioritising need in the context of Putting People First: a whole system approach to eligibility for social care – guidance on eligibility criteria for adult social care, England 2010’, London: Department of Health.

Department of Health (2013) ‘Draft national minimum eligibility threshold for adult care and support. A discussion document’, London: Department of Health

Mandelstam, M. (2013) Safeguarding Adults and the Law. London: Jessica Kingsley.

Rosengard, A., Ridley, J. & Manthorpe, J. (2013) ‘Housing support and personalisation: observations from the Scottish Self-Directed Support test sites’, Housing, Care and Support, 16(3/4): 136-144.

Nearly there? The Care Bill and adult safeguarding

Posted on November 5, 2013 by

Caroline Norrie and Katie Graham provide an update on the progress of the Care Bill through Parliament with particular reference to its impact on adult safeguarding.

The Care Bill—described as “the biggest overhaul of social care rules for 65 years” (The Guardian, 9 October, 2013)—had its first reading in the House of Commons last week after completing its passage through the House of Lords. The scope of the Bill is extensive, attempting to amalgamate the dispersed and patchy adult social care legislation and including stipulations around social care assessment and funding changes. However, as researchers working on a project about adult safeguarding, we have been following the new adult safeguarding components of the Bill with much interest.

Katie attended the second reading of the Bill on 22 May. Lord Howe presented wellbeing as a central principle of the Bill whilst outlining plans for care funding arrangements (following, though not implementing, all Dilnot’s recommendations), a response to the Francis Report (not including the recommended regulation of social care and health care assistants), a strengthening of carers’ rights and a commitment to place adult safeguarding on a statutory footing.

The principles behind the Bill appeared to be welcomed by many of the speakers that day in the House, although with important caveats. Lord Howe alluded to one of the fundamental difficulties enacting the vision when saying “[a]s a nation we are living longer, which I am sure all noble Lords welcome. Managing the fiscal consequences of this will be a key challenge in the coming years”. Baroness Wheeler brought into stark reality the dire state of local authority funding, highlighting that councils “…by the end of this spending round, will have been stripped of £2.7 billion from their adult social care services, equivalent to 20% of their care budgets, as demand for services increases”.

More recently Caroline attended the House of Lords to listen to amendments tabled at the Bill’s 1^st sitting of the report stage on 9 October. Discussions included an amendment which was successfully tabled by the Patron of Action on Adult Abuse, Baroness Greengross, to introduce a duty on councils to provide people with an independent advocate during assessment and support planning if they would otherwise have difficulty in understanding or communicating information, and have no one else to represent them.

Baroness Greengross also proposed amendments aimed at giving social workers powers to obtain court orders to gain access to enter private homes where they suspect a vulnerable adult is being abused but coerced into silence. These amendments were defeated with ministers arguing that existing legal powers were sufficient and social workers needed to improve their skills and knowledge in applying them to protect adults. (Power of entry is already available to social workers in Scotland.) A survey of The College of Social Work members last year showed strong support for a qualified power of access by a social worker to interview a vulnerable adult where this was being blocked by a third party. Lobbying on this issue continues.

Other elements of the Bill with specific implications for safeguarding practice include:

Enquiries by Local Authorities

The Care Bill proposes a new legal duty for local authorities to make enquiries when they have a reasonable cause to suspect that an adult in their area has a need of care and support, is at risk of abuse and neglect and is unable to protect him or herself. The local authority must make whatever enquiries it thinks necessary to enable it to decide whether any action should be taken in that adult’s case. The Care Bill also confirms, for the first time in law, that “abuse” includes financial abuse. That includes having money or property stolen; being defrauded; being put under pressure in relation to money or other property; and, having money or other property misused. Advocacy organisations including The College of Social Work have been active in lobbying to ensure that people with complex needs are assessed by ‘appropriately qualified staff’.

Safeguarding Adults Boards

Safeguarding Adults Boards are to become statutory and to be composed of multi-disciplinary members. Again, The College of Social Work, amongst others, has been vocal in lobbying to ensure that the local authority representative on safeguarding adult boards should be social work-qualified.

Safeguarding Adult Reviews

The Care Bill proposes local authority Safeguarding Adults Boards must carry out a formal case review if an adult at risk in their area dies in circumstances where abuse or neglect are known or suspected. It must also carry out a review if it suspects that an adult has experienced serious abuse or neglect. Any review must identify the lessons to be learnt from that adult’s case, and apply those lessons to future cases. The stated aim of a review will be to ensure that lessons are learned from such cases; not to allocate blame, but to improve future practice and partnership working, to minimise the possibility of it happening again. With regard to this issue, The College of Social Work has argued for Safeguarding Adult Review teams to “include a social worker with substantial experience of safeguarding work”. Our Unit continues its work on the current system of Serious Case Reviews for adults.

Last week saw the third reading of the Bill in the Lords; a time for tweaking with no major changes suggested. However, there was considerable discussion over an amendment that was tabled, but which after discussion was removed. This focused on safeguarding of vulnerable adults in ‘approved premises’. Lord Patel of Bradford argued that vulnerable people in probation services are not adequately catered for in the Bill and called for a review on “the discharge by probation trusts of their responsibilities for safeguarding adults residing in approved premises” a year after the enactment of the Bill. Lord Patel argued that planned privatisation of probation provision could make it difficult to ensure effective safeguarding provision for those people using probation services. This abandoned amendment raised once more the question of the clarity of roles and responsibilities of all agencies working with people who may be at risk of abuse.

When summing up her contribution to the second reading of the Bill Baroness Campbell said that much depends “on how local authorities choose to implement their responsibilities and powers under this legislation. There is a great danger that this Bill could be ignored as fine words but without teeth”. We await to see what changes, if any, will be made to the Care Bill as it now proceeds through the House of Commons.

Caroline Norrie and Dr Katie Graham are both researchers at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit, King’s College London. They are working on: Models of safeguarding: a study comparing specialist and non-specialist safeguarding teams for adults – currently in its fieldwork stage.

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