The Ethos Behind The Foundation's Kindness Audit

The Edith Ellen Foundation recently featured on the Professional Standards Authorities Viewpoint for their 2018 Winter Campaign

Viewpoint 

Kate Blake, Co-founder of the Edith Ellen Foundation explains the ethos behind the Foundation's Kindness Audit

#DementiaAwareness #DementiaCare #KindnessInCare #Share #DementiaSupport #UKCharityWeek #DementiaCharity #StarttheConversation #DementiaSucks #MoreCaringApproach #Dementia2018 #FollowUs #DementiaCrew #dementiaArticle

Happy New Year

Merry Christmas from All the Team at The Edith Ellen Foundation

#UKCharityWeek2017

We The Edith Ellen Foundation and the Mummy Dementia are proud to be supporting #UKCharityWeek 2017

#UKCharityWeek is designed to give the people of the United Kingdom an opportunity to place awareness and fundraising for charities high on the national agenda at a time of the year when people are statistically at their most giving.

For the rest of this week we will be dedicated to raising awareness surrounding MCI, Dementia, Dementia Care and Care in Crisis.

We have a number of events planned and will be posting regular updates on our Social Media

www.facebook.com/edithellenfoundation.com
www.twitter.com/edithellen2013

So please come and join us and help be the change.

A More Caring Approach #MCA Caring for those in Care and the community as they would like

Care Services Requires Focus

The Edith Ellen Foundation believes that despite the implementation of various pieces of care legislation, regulations and training programmes intended to improve care systems, the care culture has not improved, and it will not improve because at present, care systems do not have an understanding of how to do it.

Care services require a focus on the fundamental cause of inconsistent basic care skills in social care processes, and how to prevent the abuse and neglect which appears in some care homes within a “caring industry”. There is an urgent need to coach management and staff away from the repetitive behavioural process that impedes a more caring delivery and kinder environment for those receiving and delivering care services.

Understanding how to deliver excellent and consistent individual care may be widely debated and discussed but only happens in those rare cases where “someone” understands how to negotiate their way around the health and social care systems and to bypass the internal and external barriers that impact on management and staff behaviour which prevent the deliver an excellent holistic care experience every time.

The Foundation understands all too well that there are real barriers that stop people trusting in the safety of some care homes, and why it might result in abysmal care processes and an unnecessary early and painful death of people receiving care.

We worry that:

·         in part, current legislation and regulation leads to people’s rights and lives being forgotten and lost and eats away at the protection, kindness respect, compassion and care benefits for the people and their family on the front line of care, in the first place.

·         the caring industry as a whole relies too heavily on tick box systems and extensive paperwork which is believed to support the care of patients but, in fact, it rarely equates to a true day in the life of a care home.

·         it relies but is not aided by the whole concept of paper trails and distance learning aids as mechanisms for safe quality assurance for caring.

Without moving away from old ways of working it will never reflect the underlying true behaviour and untrained approaches from care workers which leads to dysfunctional and disconnected ways of working and lack of quality assurance of care, which can be found in care homes in the UK.

The Edith Ellen Foundation believes it is the Good News Story leading the way for our Edith Ellen care workers to be trained and recognised as the leaders for professional excellence in the care Industry.

It believes it holds the essential key strategy and policies that will bring fresh ideas to care and will see sustainable and consistent outcomes supporting the wellbeing and self-worth of all those delivering and receiving care and will create a necessary guarantee for the safety of people and their families.

As such, its aim is to assist in improving the trust and provision of robust, dedicated and practical holistic Kindness in Care, and to guide management and staff education toward proven behaviour and staff skills that sees and understand the overall benefits of caring in the manner which, so many good carers wish to give, but are hampered without the support of effective and attentive processes and management and staff teams learning how to deliver excellent care together.

This Foundation looks to provide a significant increase in the understanding of the people’s own requirements and the overall standard and recognition of the place outstanding quality nursing and care in all care homes, locally and nationally plays in the reputation, sustainability and profitability of the care industry across the UK.

The Edith Ellen Foundation believes a sound commitment to kindness should be the lifeblood of anyone involved in the provision of care. If that principle were to be enshrined within the culture of all nursing and social care pathways, then abuse and neglect could be prevented.

As a Foundation we can’t do that without your help please support us as we start to open up the next phase of our Kindness in Care Training programme for 2018-2020.

Contact us for more details of our Training Prospectus, befriending through the Lady Bader Ambassadors and for information on how getting involved in Volunteering for us will make such a difference to changing the culture of care. We would also greatly appreciate if you share our social media sites with others.

To hear more please contact us on: office@edithellenfoundation.org

or call us on 07809 905009

join us on our social network links:

(Website which is currently being updated)

http://www.edithellenfoundation.org
Facebook Account www.facebook.com/edithellenfoundation

Twitter Account http://www.twitter.com/edithellen2013

Or join the debate with

#Awareness #MoreCaringApproach #DementiaCare #SocialIsolation

Promoting Kindness
By identifying, celebrating and sharing good practice

Kindness is
Compassion without judgement,
No fear just one heart to another

Thank you.

Kate (Co-Founder)

CopyrightKBoct17

As Alzheimer's Numbers Soar, is our Focus on Caregivers?

As the numbers for Dementia and Alzheimer’s diagnoses increase, where is our focus on Caregivers?  Caregivers need and want to access support resources and that perhaps the experiences of caregiving has made them consider the possibility of their own future needs! There is no doubt that the current number and expected increase in the foreseeable future of individuals with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease will necessitate it.

Are organisations such as Alzheimer’s Society developing and deploying more local and online resources for caregivers?

Is there a range of self-help tools and classes for learning new skills that may be needed in the role?

What about the decline in support groups? Where funding has meant closures?

And is there enough respite care that can help give caregivers a break from their duties?

Health Care Providers who look after medical needs such as GP’s could be an excellent opportunity to ensure support – if the health care provider routinely asked patients if they serve as a caregiver to a loved one, they could identify and address needs and concerns during the caregiver’s own appointments.

Our focused today is on unpaid dementia caregivers: family, and friends who help people with memory problems or manage health issues and provide personal care.

Looking after your own health is vital to sustaining your capacity as an unpaid carer

Ask for Help

If you are caring you should always ask for help, it is not a weakness.  Tell people when you are not coping.  If you need time or you just need someone to cut the slack, ask.  Even if it’s just to give you a hug let people know.

Plan your time

Don’t try to cram too much into your day, it will end up making you stressed and exhausted.

Make time to regularly do something for your self – just 10 minutes every day or an hour or two every week can really help.

Be positive – focus on the five things that worked today, not the one that didn’t.

Support

Finding support can be difficult if you don’t know where to turn. Speak to your GP or visit the Carers Trust website (carers.org), you can do this anonymously if you’re finding it hard to ask for help and the guide you on local to you support groups.

Make sure you let your GP know that you are a carer as they will record this on your notes and may be able to offer you extra support. Also see 10 top tips to get the most out of your GP appointment from Healthwatch.

Keep records

I’m not the carer but the cared for person and I find keeping records is a life saver sometimes.

Always write down who you phoned, when and the outcome of the call so you can refer back to it when needed, especially if the professional doesn’t do what they said they would.

Remember you have a right to make requests so that you and whoever you care for have lives of your own that are healthy, happy and as solvent as possible.

Take care of your relationships

It can be that the strain of caring for a loved one or friend can have an effect on your other relationships.

By taking care of your relationships, you can take care of yourself.  It can be difficult to recognise when caring is causing problems and by maintaining your other relationships you can ask for support or just talk when needed.