Care Talk: The Season of Good Tidings

Topics covered: Ridouts professional advice

It’s all too easy to be negative about the care sector, so this month, as Christmas approaches, I thought it was time to reflect on some of the positive messages around care.   Here are some of them.

  • There has never before been such focus on the welfare and choice of service users.  Regulatory requirements, adult protection, human rights, the Mental Capacity Act and equality law all stress the welfare and dignity of service users.  From induction onwards, those values are ingrained into the carers.  We must not let shocking exceptions cloud the fact that service users have never before been cared for so well.
  • The focus on listening to service users is extending to listening to families, especially where service users lack capacity.  Again that is to be welcomed.  Families know and care for service users more than anyone else and their contributions can only help to ensure that care is delivered in a way that benefits service users.
  • The funding crisis will be resolved.  Whether through the Dilnot proposals or through some other means, there will be a resolution for the simple reason that the alternative is unthinkable.  We live in a society where we do insist on caring for those who may be unable to care fully for themselves, and that core value seems unlikely to diminish.  It follows that society must, and therefore will, find a way to fund that value.
  • The market for care will continue to grow.  That reflects several social trends amongst which the happiest is that life expectance continues to rise.
  • New and exciting models of care will develop which will provide opportunities for the sector.  This is the result of some of the trends explained above relating to an ever aging population who demand choice about how they are cared for.
  • Carers have never before had such open access to high quality training.  That is a product of regulation, but the benefit to staff is that people can enter the caring profession with no skills or training at all and develop, if they are ambitious and conscientious, to manage services and beyond.  It is in that sense, care is one of the most accessible and egalitarian of professions in society.
  • Low interest rates continue which offers opportunities for growth.
  • CQC has been heavily criticised by the House of Commons Health Committee and the hopelessly ill-thought out proposal for an ‘Excellence’ scheme has been dropped.  The scathing report by the Health Committee was so extensive that CQC’s performance is bound to improve.

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