Our Purpose - Mistaken Beliefs

An article from our founder

I think for me it is the quality of the training and lack of urgent nursing and care in the community when it is needed that worries me.

The Foundation is aware of what is happening with the lack of joined up care in the community and the added lack of proper treatment, support and understanding for people with complex health conditions, I fear it will simply result in isolating our frail and vulnerable people even more and, what we believe we are now seeing, - huge increases in people dying from Dementia. Very little care is focused around delivering better attitudes and approaches to people that are confused, anxious and frightened.

That is why the Foundation has Kindness in Care focused on a training syllabus over and beyond the requirements of the CQC. It looks to prevent the "Perch Problems" which can lead to dysfunctional and disconnected managers, staff who are undervalued and demotivated from lack of management support, and poor performances from services where they rely on individuals rather than effective and attentive management and staff teams delivering excellent care together. Unless we start bucking the current trends in community where many are not getting the basic care they need, we might well be looking at care that could see these "Community Villages" becoming our worst nightmare- Ghettos of abandoned and neglected older and ill people left to fend by themselves or with help from some kind neighbors.  

Let’s get all care workers trained and certified as outstanding. Our goal to do so is through our support, training and development programme, getting management and teams respecting and working together in harmony, focused on the individual needs of people in their care, in an environment that endorses those caring people that dedicate their care for other.

In the Foundation’s opinion, it is not an acceptable answer to unsafe care, to simply close down services and move people out. Within the Foundation’s own core values, it has to stand up to challenge any philosophy that appears to support care by punishing people who have been abused, but not the people that have carried out the abuse.

To extract people who have been abused and neglected out of their care service, and to move them into others, having no guarantees that these care standards are any safer, is surely not the right directions for improving the protecting frail and vulnerable people. Particularly if later that care service is deemed unsafe and requires closure.

Neither, in such circumstance, should good care workers be punished by having their reputations tarnished when they have done no wrong, and for them to find themselves jobless, when their services are closed.

In care, today it is not enough to simply rely on current systems of Legislation and Regulation to improve care, as they do little to address the many conflicts of interest that exist, and merely promote systems that are not fit for purpose.

Therefore, robust safeguards, not unproven platitudes of “Lessons will be learnt” and “Our services have improved” are a must for protection, respect and dignity be restored to all, (including staff), who suffer abuse, and are being victimised.

All services are duty bound to cherish the people in their care. Yet Health and Social Care, in its current configuration, does little to stop leaving people living in care fearful of facing their own fate, alone and frightened.

It is a sad indictment that within in Social Care today and Social Care Partnerships, people and families in care have no confidence in its role as the Guardians of People’s Protection when people approach them with concerns of the abysmal atrocities in care.

Complainants, who bring these crimes to the attention of those in authority have done nothing wrong, and simply required genuine reassurance, actions and outcomes. They need to know people’s suffering will be taken seriously and stopped. But little is in place which reflects a genuine desire to act with openness and transparency, and for honesty and integrity to prevail in any matters of genuine support and improved outcomes.

If anything, current systems appear to condone the dynamics of fear, bullying and suppression when potential risks to life are reported, as the abuse and neglect is mostly ignored, and merely continues to escalate out of control or until urgent admission to hospitals is required.

If ever there was the need of radical reform on how to address and stamp out abuse and neglect, it is now.

Before our whole care system slips over the very precarious cliff of misconception that closing care homes, and bring all care into the community, is the preventative answer to better care. It is support for improved training in humane attitudes and approaches that will see the truly effective measures and outcomes.