care home workers are 'crying out' for dementia training

Care failures reveal care home workers are 'crying out' for dementia training

Identifiable through recent reports within the national press and on national TV, a lack of training and understanding for care home workers is leaving people with dementia in soiled clothing, without food or water or in hospitals and care homes when they should be at home.

In a recent visit, we highlighted failures by identifying insufficiently trained care home workers which was resulting in poor care for those with dementia.  This includes not properly supporting people to eat or take medication, leaving people in dirty clothes for days or unwashed for weeks.

Those with dementia are also getting infections which are not identified by staff resulting in emergency hospital admission.  Because they are unable to recognise when a person is “not themselves” and refuse to listen to relatives who raise concerns.

A lack of dementia care training and understanding is also forcing people to move into care homes because home care workers cannot cope with people's needs.

In some case workers asked for training but didn't get it.  Some 43 per cent of home care workers have asked for further dementia training, however in more than half (54 per cent) of cases this was turned down.

The Edith Ellen Foundation believes that The UKHCA’s training programme ‘Dementia Care for Homecare Providers’ will be piloted from January 2017.  The United Kingdom Homecare Association (UKHCA) which is the professional association for more than 2,200 domiciliary care providers.

Meanwhile, a report published on 17 November by the charity Age UK reveals 1.2m older people are not getting the social care they need. 

The number of older people (aged 65 or over) in England who don’t get the social care they need has risen by 48 per cent since 2010.  

This means nearly one in eight older people are struggling to carry out tasks such as getting out of bed, going to the toilet, washing and getting dressed.  Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK said: “The sad irony is that it would be far more cost effective, as well as infinitely more humane, to give these older people the care and support they need.” 

The Edith Ellen Foundation, can offer this training.  We have a full training model which is sustainable and we can provide the after care support so many training programmes lack.