Tag Archives: social care

Policy-by-policy: How's coalition done so far?

January 10, 2013   Carers, disability, Older care

BBC experts’ commentary.

SOCIAL ACTION

Original coalition agreement pledges:

  • Support the creation and expansion of mutuals, co-operatives, charities and social enterprises
  • Public sector workers to form co-operatives and take over delivery of services
  • Encourage volunteering and charitable giving
  • Introduce National Citizen Service
  • Found a Big Society bank to finance local charities and social enterprises
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Great grandmother, 100, died ‘because of carers’ poor English’

January 9, 2013   Alzheimer’s, Carers, dementia, ukcuts

A 100-year-old woman died from a fractured skull after falling from a sling because there was a “language barrier” with her foreign nurses, an inquest heard.

Great grandmother, 100, died 'because of carers' poor English'

The medics told the inquest they struggled to treat Mrs Ward because she couldn’t understand the foreign nurses Photo: SWNS

By Hayley Dixon

3:51PM GMT 09 Jan 2013

Great-grandmother May Lavinia Ward was “full of life” until she fell a metre and a half from a bucket sling as she was moved from a chair to a bed, fracturing her skull, and hip and breaking her knee.

Carers Shasha Wei, from China, and Rumyana Ivanova, from Bulgaria, put the bloodied dementia patient back to bed for forty minutes after she had jerked forward onto the floor when one of them let her go.

Her agitation may have been caused because she couldn’t understand them, Hertfordshire Coroners Court heard today.

They had even changed her clothes but eventually a nurse at Meppershall Care Home, Bedfordshire, was informed and paramedics rushed to the scene to find Mrs Ward, who had a broken leg and swollen eye, vomiting dark blood.

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GPs to be paid to take more notice of carers’ needs

January 8, 2013   Carers, health

Will this be a step forward for the family carer?

Family doctors are to be assessed on how much they know about patients in their practice who care for someone with dementia, if new guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) are agreed.

The proposals form part of the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF), which sets performance standards for GPs and also rewards them financially for meeting those standards.

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