Category Archives: Featured Article

Service users and carers help draw up homecare blueprint

September 2, 2014   Carers, Featured Article, Social care

Practitioners, carers and service users are helping the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence write guidance for improving homecare

 

  • Bridget Warr, chief executive, UK Homecare Association
  • Guardian Professional,
The members of the guideline development group are examining the issues and defining good practice, ‘with a reality check at every step’. 

Sandra is passionate about good homecare. Her mother had Alzheimer’s and Sandra watched carers come into the home for five years. Sandra knows, as an “expert by experience”, about the big homecare issues: reliability and flexibility of staff, continuity of care and the difficulty of having strangers in the house.

Sandra is a member of a group of people who are helping the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) to produce its first social care guidance, on providing care and support in people’s homes. By highlighting the issues they know about, she and the other carers and service users are keeping them at the forefront of care providers’ minds. It’s a complex thing to get right, but carers and users must be at the heart of improving service provision “inch by inch,” Sandra says.

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The torment of trying to be a good granny AND a dutiful daughter

September 1, 2014   Alzheimer’s, Cancer, Carers, deaf/blind, family, Featured Article, Older care

Top author Rosie Staal says women like her are in despair

  • 92-year-old mother Jean is beset by Alzheimer’s, breast cancer, hearing loss and poor sight 
  • Rosie longs to spend more time with grandsons Joe, 5 and Zach, 3, and her two-year-old granddaughter Poppy
  • Women over 60 make up nearly a third of all hospital admissions for anxiety – juggling caring for elderly parents, grandchildren and ageing or ill partners
  • Rosie worries she is also neglecting her husband David 

By Rosie Staal

Published: 22:01, 31 August 2014 |

On the train heading home to Dorset from London last week, I leaned my head against the cold window, closed my eyes and savoured a rare moment to draw breath.

After spending three days with my grandsons Joe, five, and Zach, three, I could still hear their joyful voices in my ears and feel their trusting little hands in mine.

Turning my back as they wave goodbye haunts me after every visit, causing a physical jolt to my heart.

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Why the ice bucket challenge matters

August 29, 2014   Carers, Featured Article, motor neurone

How motor neurone disease took my dad’s voice and independence

By Hull Daily Mail  |  Posted: August 29, 2014

Hundreds in Hull and the East Riding have taken on the ice bucket challenge to fight motor neurone disease – but few had more reason than Mail competition winner Charlotte Ashfield from Hessle. James Burton reports.

For many participants, the latest charity craze is just a bit of fun.

But when Charlotte Ashfield took on the ice bucket challenge to raise cash for the fight against motor neurone disease, it was personal.

Her father has been living with the condition for almost a decade, with the disease claiming his voice.

Hundreds in Hull and the East Riding have taken on the ice bucket challenge to fight motor neurone disease – but few had more reason than Mail competition winner Charlotte Ashfield from Hessle. James Burton reports.

For many participants, the latest charity craze is just a bit of fun.

But when Charlotte Ashfield took on the ice bucket challenge to raise cash for the fight against motor neurone disease, it was personal.

Her father has been living with the condition for almost a decade, with the disease claiming his voice.

With others finally taking notice of the devastating impact of the condition, she felt the urge to get involved.

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