Partners In Care

The current End of Life Newsletter is now available, to down the newsletter please see the right hand side of this page listed under related documents.

This prestigious South West Award is given by the South West Regional Committee of Skills for Care in memory of Ted Gully, the founder Chair of the Regional Committee, founder member of the Avon Care Sector Employers’ Consortium (now Care Learning), Chair of the Avon Registered Care Homes Association and long time champion of raising standards in social care delivery.

The Award highlights the high standard of work carried out by those in a team leadership role and inspires achievement in care and support staff at all levels as well as promoting the social care sector in the South West.

Nominations will be invited for Managers or Team Leaders in a social care setting who have been in post for 18 months or less. The Award aims to highlight and recognise managers who have made a significant difference to and enhanced the quality of life of the people who use their care services, and who have inspired a better quality of care through the learning and development of the staff.

The regional winner will receive a £1,000 travel bursary to enable him or her to look at models of care and support in other parts of the UK as well as abroad, and two additional finalists will receive an award to the value of £500 each for personal learning and development. The Awards will be announced and presented at the next Skills for Care Regional Conference in November 2010.

Does this sound like you or someone you know? If you provide a high quality service and invest in training, qualifications and development for your staff we want to hear from you. You can nominate yourself or nominate another manager or team leader that you think would be a worthy winner of the Ted Gully Award 2010.

All nominations must be received by Friday 24th September 2010.

Please see the attached information sheet and nomination form under related documents for additional information and to enter.

If you have any questions or queries, please Leah-Marie Mills, Skills for Care South West Interim Regional Development Officer on 01363 776142.

The principles of infection prevention in care and nursing homes

At Infection Prevention 2010, on the 20th, 21st and 22nd September 2010, Bournemouth International Centre,

FREE ENTRY

The Infection Prevention Society are holding a series of FREE study days on infection prevention in care homes. These free study days are a quick way of being updated not only about the implications of the CQC Essential Standards of Quality and Safety as it relates to infection prevention but also there are short sessions on a number of infection prevention issues likely to occur. Finding expert affordable training for care homes can be problematic. However the Infection Prevention Society is offering free lectures for all staff explaining the basic principles of infection prevention. These events are being run alongside the UK’s largest infection prevention exhibition where the latest products and services will be on show.

Delegates must register to attend - places are limited so apply early. The fastest way is via the website - to register for your free place visit events force

The National End of Life Care Programme is producing a series of practical guides for staff and managers to improve end of life care in their services and ensure they are making the best use of resources. The first of these is for care homes. As well as care home managers and staff, it will also be of interest to people in local authorities and PCTs who commission care home places. Download the guide

The internet and IT are transforming the way we communicate, learn and work. Get Connected is a new support programme to enable providers of care for adults in England to access information and communication technology (ICT) more effectively.

For more information please click here

Take part in our research and get a robust measure of staff training needs and carers’ views on your service!

About the Project

The Department of Health Strategy ‘Carers at the heart of 21st century families and communities' made a specific commitment to ensuring that staff across the board from health to housing would receive training to better meet the needs of carers.

As part of this commitment, Skills for Care is working in partnership with Skills for Health and the Department of Health to develop a comprehensive learning resource that can be used by any organisation to commission and/or deliver training on working with carers. The project is known as the Carers Strategy Training the Wider Workforce Project

Does it make a difference?

Following work in development sites, this resource will 'go live' in 18 sites across England in October 2010. We want to establish if the training and learning carried out actually makes a difference to the skills, knowledge and confidence of staff and the lives of carers they come into contact with. Skills for Care and Skills for Health have commissioned an independent agency, HOST Policy Research, to evaluate the impact of the resources and make recommendations regarding their further development and roll out.

As well as carrying out research with sites using the learning resources, we need to look at carers’ experience and staff skills and knowledge in sites not using the materials to help assess the impact of the training/learning received.

Are you interested in evaluating staff training needs and carers’ experience of your services?

We are looking for organisations to take part in the evaluation. This could involve one department or a number of sites and partner organisations, as you prefer. The commitment would involve the following input from front line staff in touch with carers:

Completion of two short surveys – one at the start of the project and a second survey three months on. Handing out a self-complete leaflet survey to clients they are in contact with, aimed at assessing carers’ experience of their service. *The research may need the approval of your local ethics committee – we can help with this process.

The Benefits

Taking part in the evaluation gives you access to a valuable evidence base to inform staff development and service improvement and highlight good practice.

You will be provided with the results of the surveys for your organisation, giving insight into staff skill levels and training needs and carer experience of your service: a valuable resource provided free of charge. Your results will not be published on a named basis by the project sponsors or HOST Policy Research.

Of course, you will also be able to benefit from accessing the learning materials after the evaluation has taken place.

Can we take part?

To take part in the evaluation you need to: Be a public, private or voluntary sector organisation whose work involves contact with carers. Be based in England. Have access to a group of staff who work with carers and are willing to take part in the research. Have the capacity to support the research (liase with HOST Policy Research in distributing surveys to staff, ensure staff hand out the carer survey, liase with HOST Policy Research on gaining ethics approval for the research where required).

What support will there be?

Host Policy Research will: Complete local ethics applications where they are required. Work with a lead contact in your organisation to identify and gain consent of staff to be included in the research. Supply all survey questionnaires. Process, analyse and report on survey results.

How do we get involved?

If you would like to be involved in the evaluation please fill in the expression of interest form and send it to: Jo.Verrill by 27th August 2010. This can be located under related documents on the right hand side of this page,

We need to ensure we have an appropriate mix of organisations involved in the evaluation. HOST Policy Research will assess all expressions of interest and let you know if we can include your organisation in the evaluation.

If you have any further queries, please telephone Jo Verrill at HOST Policy Research on 01403 211440: or email Jo.Verrill

You an also contact Diane Buddery at Skills for Care on: 07909 873231, or email Diane Buddery.

NHS White Paper: Consultation Event Regional Health Conference

NHS White Paper: Consultation Event

The recently published NHS White Paper proposes enormous changes to the way health services are structured. 'Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS' was published on 12th July and sets out the Government's vision for the NHS. The proposals represent some of the biggest changes to the NHS in the last 60 years and provide both opportunities and challenges for voluntary and community organisations.

Contained within the White Paper are plans which include a shake-up of the design and delivery of health and care services locally. These will be administered by Consortia consisting of local authorities, GPs and communities. It is through communities that VCOs might have the opportunity to influence, shape and deliver services as appropriate.

Whether you currently deliver, or plan to deliver, health and care services, you should be aware of the proposals contained within the White Paper and how they will affect you.

White Paper Consultation event: Tuesday 14th September, Exeter

As part of Regional Voices (the network of nine English regional voluntary and community sector networks) South West Forum is running a workshop in partnership with the Department of Health.

Participants will have the opportunity to develop a better understanding of the proposals by hearing directly from Senior Department of Health officials leading in these areas, and to feedback directly on the 5 consultation topics that will be released shortly in relation to the White Paper. Regional Voices will use feedback from these events to help inform our response to each of the 5 consultation areas.

Places are limited so book now!

This event is free, however a charge will be made if you book a place but do not attend; full details in the booking form.

Click here to find out more information and click here to download the booking form (300KB MS Word Document)

You can find the White Paper along with related documents on the Department of Health website: www.dh.gov.uk/liberatingthenhs

Regional Health Conference

SWF Annual Conference 2010 The 2010 SWF Annual Conference will be looking at what's happening now and what lies ahead for voluntary and community groups involved in health, social care and welfare.

Speakers include

Richard Wilkinson, co-author of 'The Spirit Level', and

Mike Grady from the Marmot review team.

Places are already going very quickly so book now to ensure your place

Contact for more information & book your place

Roger Haworth 01392 247901 / 07792 206836.

We are pleased to advise, Partners in Care has been awarded the Skills for Care Training Strategy Implementation Funding (TSIF) contract for 2010/11.

Click here where you will find all the information and guidance you need to make a claim and the downloadable documents. The most useful document to look at first is the TSI Funding Registration 2010/11 Form, which contains an easy to follow, step-by-step guide.

If you have claimed funding in previous years please be aware there are some changes to the process this year. An important point to note is the initial submission date of 1st November 2010. PIC will submit all claims received before this date to Skills for Care for approval. The second submission date will be announced later in the year, once all claims from the November deadline have been settled.

Eligible units will be funded at a maximum of £65 per unit – where this does not exceed the training costs incurred. Claims are only eligible for units signed off/mandatory training completed, since 1st January 2010.

Further information is availble on the Funding page Read More

There is currently an ESF incentive available in Dorset that gives employers who take on a new apprenticeship or put an existing member of staff through an apprenticeship incentives of £1000 and £750 per apprentice (with maximum amounts for each) respectively. The downloadable document to the right provides more information.

Skills for Care have produced a new leaflet providing an update on the direction of travel for developing new qualifications for the Qualification Credit Framework (QCF). To download the leaflet please click on the link called QCF Leaflet on the right hand side.

Launch Event

Skills for Care will be holding an event in September to launch the new qualifications and give more information to employers, training providers, publishers and others with a keen interest. If you would like to receive more information on this event please email (Marketing)[mailto:marketing@skillsforcare.org.uk].

These are now available on the Skills for Care website.

Following consultation with the sector, Skills for Care has refreshed the standards to ensure they are fit for purpose and reflect current policy and practice. The Common Induction Standards are for people entering social care, and those changing roles or employers within social care.

The effective implementation of the Common Induction Standards is a significant step towards the delivery of high quality care and support The Care Quality Commission's Essential Standards of Quality and Safety highlight the importance and value of strong and comprehensive induction and they will need to be assured that all new staff have undergone a thorough induction process.

You can download the details from our website – www.skillsforcare.org.uk/cis.

Skills for Care has welcomed the decision by the Skills Funding Agency to extend the time limit for new learners registering on NVQ Level 2 and 3 Social Care qualifications.

The NVQ funding was due to be withdrawn in August 2010 as part of the transition to the Qualifications and Credit Framework (QCF). But the Skills Funding Agency has now agreed to continue to provide funding for eligible learners in this area starting NVQ Level 2 and 3 Social Care qualifications up until 31 December 2010.

This Skills Funding Agency list of NVQ qualifications that will not be funded beyond 31 July 2010 can be found at Skills Funding Agency.

From January 2011 a new range of qualifications will be introduced to replace the current Health and Social Care NVQ at level 2 and level 3. These will be called Health and Social Care Diplomas at Level 2 and level 3. There will be options to take a generic HSC Diploma or a specialist Dementia pathway or Learning Disability pathway which will allow learners to tailor their learning to their job role.

Skills for Care is committed to the introduction of the new qualifications as part of the QCF and is working closely with all partners to ensure that all the necessary arrangements are in place for their introduction.