Tag Archives: dementia

Social care is on the critical list. But Dilnot won’t cure it

June 27, 2011   Carers, Older care, ukcuts

Social care is on the critical list. But Dilnot won’t cure it

A nation that spends less than 0.5% on old age can hardly expect anything other than a decrepit system. We can do better

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    • Residents Southern Cross care home in Camberwell

    Residents sit outside a London care home belonging to the financially troubled Southern Cross group. Photograph: Paul Hackett/Reuters

    Another week, another care home shocker. The family of a resident in Ash Court Care Centre in London hid a camera in a clock and allegedly caught a care worker repeatedly slapping, hitting and shouting abuse at their demented mother, with other staff joining in.

    The victim was an 80-year-old former dinner lady, seen on camera crying as she was hit in the face. The family suspected something was wrong when she wept whenever they visited, but she was past explaining. Police arrested a male care worker and suspended four women at the home, run by Forest Healthcare, which owns what its website cosily calls “a family of homes” all over the country. The scandal of these end-of-life warehouses will worsen, subsisting on lower fees, banished to the margins of political concern, the cash-starved regulator cutting inspections by 70%.

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    Social worker endures isolation to learn practice lessons

    June 27, 2011   Carers, disability, Older care, social workers

    Social worker endures isolation to learn practice lessons

    Jeremy Dunning

    Monday 27 June 2011 15:05

    “I’ve only lasted half-a-day today. I feel tired and weary and I just needed to get away from the office.”

    This was social worker Pam Stopforth speaking today on her first day back at work after a week pretending to be a lonely and isolated older person as part of social experiment organised for Isolation Week.

    The experience, which included wearing vision-impaired glasses and diving gloves in order to carry out specific tasks and living alone without speaking to anyone for a week, proved unexpectedly taxing but left her with insights as to how to improve her own practice.

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    £35,000-plus care bill for better off

    June 26, 2011   Alzheimer’s, Carers, dementia, Older care, ukcuts

    £35,000-plus care bill for better off

    The better-off will be expected to cover at least the first £35,000 of their care in old age under recommendations by a government-commissioned review, according to a report.

     

    People with substantial assets will be expected to cover at least the first £35,000 of their care in old age

    8:00AM BST 26 Jun 2011

    Forthcoming proposals by the Dilnot Commission will call for more state funding for elderly care so that the current £23,250-threshold means test can be increased.

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