Category Archives: disability

Sorry, love: Harrogate care home will use ‘darling’, despite CQC warning

Skills 4 Living centre to continue to use terms of endearment, while CQC says individual preferences must be respected

A carer holding a patient’s hand. Photograph: Terry Vine/Blend Images/Corbis

A Harrogate care home has vowed to continue using terms of endearment such as “love” and “darling” in spite of a warning from inspectors.

The Harrogate Skills 4 Living centre was told to improve its caring after inspectors from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) overheard carers using terms that “could be regarded as demeaning and patronising”.

Queen Elizabeth II becomes longest-reigning UK monarch

Congratulations from family carers

Queen Elizabeth II becomes Britain’s longest-reigning monarch later when she passes the record set by her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria.

The Queen will have reigned for 63 years and seven months – calculated at 23,226 days, 16 hours and approximately 30 minutes at about 17:30 BST.

Prime Minister David Cameron will lead tributes in the House of Commons and there will be a River Thames salute.

Carers willing to share family home asked to come forward

Julie Armstrong /

Shared Lives carer Myrna, on right, who shares her home with Mary

MORE carers are needed to support adults with learning disabilities within the family home.

Twelve adults in the Ealing borough with mild to moderate learning difficulties are currently benefiting from at-home placements as part of the Ealing Shared Lives scheme.

Half live with families full-time as an alternative to living in a care home, while the rest use the scheme for overnight or short term respite care or support in the community.

The philosophy behind Shared Lives is that the cared-for person becomes part of the family.