The
National Skills Academy for Social Care, the organisation dedicated to
improving leadership, management and commissioning in social care, is
dismayed to read yet another report illustrating the low quality of care
towards older people.
Today’s
review of home care from the Equality and Human Rights Commission,
whilst noting that around half of people who gave evidence reported real
satisfaction with their care, also demonstrates common complaints and
highlights an unacceptably high degree of poor practice. Some of this
practice is so poor that it could constitute a breach of the European
Convention of Human Rights. But it is all grounded in a basic lack of
compassion.
Diane Lawson, Chief Executive of the National Skills Academy, said: “This report is shocking,
not least because it comes so quickly after reports from the CQC and
the Patients’ Association illustrating poor levels of care for older
people in residential and hospital settings. We are an organisation
dedicated to excellence in social care, and we have many domiciliary
care providers and local authorities amongst our Members who are
similarly committed to providing an excellent service.
For
us, the best way to improve practice is through the behaviours, and
especially the leadership behaviours, of people working in home care, so
that issues around lack of compassion can be addressed early.
Our leadership programmes, which are aimed at people throughout the workforce from Care Assistants to strategic roles, are
based on getting people to recognise how they act and the effect this
has on the people they work with, so that they can improve their own
practice and address poor practice in others. Organisations can use
these programmes to drive up the skills of leaders and managers across
their teams.
As
a result, practice will change as we improve training and development
for people in social care. Our Endorsement Framework for social care
training providers, the only one of its kind in social care, recognises
and badges excellent training that focuses on social care values,
marrying technical skills with compassion and empathy.
The
Skills Academy will shortly be launching its Leadership Strategy, and a
Leadership Qualities Framework. This is designed to support employers,
trainers and commissioners so that the right leadership behaviours can
be embedded in social care. It is part of our mission to build
leadership and management capacity in adult social care, across
residential and home care, so that excellent quality becomes the norm.”
-Ends-
Editors’ Notes
- The employer-driven National Skills Academy for Social Care focuses on leadership, management and commissioning and modelling excellence in learning, in adult social care.
- It
is the first welfare-related Academy in the network of National Skills
Academies which are employer-led centres of training excellence
established by industry to create a world-class workforce by delivering the skills that employers need in each sector of the economy.
- The
Skills Academy’s remit is to promote and support excellent learning and
training for the 1.6 million workers and 40,600 employers in social
care with a particular emphasis on small and medium-sized employers.
Demographic changes mean the social care workforce is expected to rise
to 2.5 million by 2025.
- The
Skills Academy is led by a Board of employer representatives from
across the statutory, private and not-for-profit sectors within adult
social care.
- The
Skills Academy’s Leadership Qualities Framework will be launched at the
beginning of 2012. The Leadership Strategy will form part of the
Health and Social Care White Paper due to be published in Spring 2012.
- For more information visit www.nsasocialcare.co.uk
For more information please contact:
Debbie Sorkin
0207 268 3287