Drawbacks of Training

Holistic Kindness in Care is realistically facing the problems in health and social care and recognising the Good Care people want to deliver

The Care Industry as a whole is raising the question of whether external training is value for money across all of the Health and Social Care Sector, when it does not appear to improve the quality of their services.

They are concerned about the attributed benefits from external training schemes, especially in the content of Dementia Training. Care providers, in the main, have told us that despite many different modules in care training, none are consistent and improve staff abilities to deliver sustainable care skills which focus on improved attitudes and approaches to outstanding person centred care. Or on a true understanding of how to mediate anxiety when people in their care exhibit signs of being upset or frustrated.

Staff are telling us that a National Training Matrix is simply not available which help staff find better ways of working. That they are held back by current care systems that prevent them dedicating their skill, as they lack the training support needed to help them develop their own ideas and pathways for better care systems.

Current care systems are hampered by groups not being able to retain good care workers. In the main staff dissatisfaction is expressed more about frustration in the culture within the working environment, than about wages or not wanting to care for people.

Most know the standard of care they would like to deliver but are looking for the practical support to understand “person centred care” and for encouragement and guidance from management leadership, training and fellow staff, to be able to provide effective, empathetic and reliable levels of skills and communications.

Staff are telling us that without the backing they require from timely connections within their own care systems and chains, the local community and all the necessary integrated services and organisations which should all be proactively interfacing with them, they are struggling to support the people they look after.

Talking to staff, they don’t feel that they have the time, or those cutting-edge skills and tools to make a positive difference to people coping with their surroundings and care. Although most want to work better, they struggled to mediate people’s feelings, fears, and frustrations, and to provide time understanding and empathy for the people in their care.

They believe that much in training is reinforcing what they already know, which is good in its way. But it does not deliver on how caring should respond to the varying levels of changes in people’s complex health conditions that they face daily. There is a belief that training lacks the help for staff to change their attitudes and habits, and to successfully understand when and how to intervene and provide best practice approaches, which will reduce and prevent people’s anxieties and boredom, and to achieve the best lifestyle for people in all aspects of care.

Very few, if any, providers can deliver on the training need for the level of wellbeing and self-worth that breaks through the fog of dementia to recognise and allay people’s fears and silent cries for unmet physical needs. Little guidance is given into an insight into the emotional state of support necessary to prevent staff adding conflict into a situation just to make it worse, and for providing all that is necessary in an environment that should be relaxed, calm, warm and comfortable at all times.

Good care is in knowing the person being cared for, allowing them to retain individuality, independence, abilities and confidence in their care, and for them to continue with their interests and access to their families, friends and communities. To care successfully, it needs skills, knowledge and ability from a robust and reflective training programme that builds kindness into the continuity of well-being for everyone being cared for, not just some.

Tick boxes objectives set by trainers not learners, and constraints in participation without two-way dialogue, will not build staff knowledge and confidence in healing people’s body and the mind. Good training is where it analyses and identifies the specific needs of the learners, allows them to own their own development needs and reinforces best practices from others experiences.

The Foundation believes that without One Standard, One Structure for holistic Social Care training, which recognises, understands and values people in care, the good carers who wish to deliver great care, and, in many ways helps management and staff to deliver improved communications throughout their operations, and success in respecting and working in harmony together, the care industry will continue to struggle and fail people and their families, and their staff.

This means that all staff should be well-trained and given clear instructions in all aspects of the administration of care for which they are responsible and should be allowed time for continuing professional development courses once they are trained.