The letter featured in a Telegraph article on 19th May.

The article states that more than a million elderly and disabled people who are in need of care could be shut out of the social care system because of the fine print of the Government’s reforms in the Care and Support Bill.

In recent years, with reductions in funding, councils have tightened up the eligibility criteria within care need assessments, meaning that in most areas only those deemed to have “substantial” needs qualify — usually meaning they can no longer live on their own.

We at Home Care Direct have noticed that many people who previously would have qualified for some support through social care after a care needs assessment are no longer meeting the eligibility criteria and this is leaving many people vulnerable.  We have found many people are either not qualifying for services or the amount of funding they are being given through their direct payment or personal budget is very low, which makes it hard for people to get the services they need.

Home Care Direct will be interested to see the response that the letter to the Prime Minister gets and will keep you up to date here.  If you’ve had experience of the social care system, good or bad we’d love to hear from you, please contact us here.

In 2012, Epilepsy Action celebrated the achievements of people with epilepsy and they wanted to set up an on-line record.  Achievements ranged from remaining seizure-free for one day to climbing Mount Everest!  Two of Epilepsy Action’s objectives are to raise awareness in their target audience about epilepsy and about their work, and to bring about permanent change for the social and medical benefit of people with epilepsy.

What is epilepsy? Has a cure of epilepsy been found? Epilepsy is tendency to have recurrent seizures, or fits.  So what causes a seizure?  A sudden burst of excess electrical activity in the brain, which causes temporary disruption in the normal message passing between brain cells.  There are many different types of seizure.  What you experience during a seizure depends on where in the brain the epileptic activity begins.

Epilepsy Action wants to make sure everyone with the condition has what they need to make the best decisions about their own individual lifestyle.

For more information about National Epilepsy Week visit the Epilepsy Action website.

Show your support for this great cause and with your help, epilepsy sufferers will have a better chance of a comfortable, happier life.

On the Epilepsy Action website they have a Myth or Fact Quiz. If you think you know about epilepsy? take their Myth or Fact quiz, designed specially for National Epilepsy Week.  The quiz covers areas and common misconceptions in areas like driving, photosensitive epilepsy, types of seizures, beauty treatments, swimming, babies and epilepsy, causes of epilepsy, what to do when someone has a seizure, having children, brainstorming, sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP).

We at Home Care Direct would love to hear about anything you are doing during National Epilepsy Week to help raise awareness of epilepsy.  So please get in touch with us here.

With Tina’s help he has cooked a full roast dinner, and a treacle sponge, they then made vanilla custard with vanilla pods, yummy!

He’s had a nice time and his pictures have made us at the Home Care Direct head office very hungry, thanks for sharing these with us Jazz.

Home Care Direct supports Jazz in North Yorkshire by using his direct payment funding to employ the personal assistants he and his family have chosen to provide his care at home, including his family members.

If you’d like to share pictures and stories of what you’ve been us to please get in touch with us here.

It focuses on providing information in a way that motivates someone to put it into practice. It is ideal for trainers, managers, supervisors and anyone else who needs to inform, instruct, supervise or train others. Everyone who undertakes the course receives a free training certificate on completion.

If you are involved in training or workplace learning in any way this is an ideal update/refresher and it is totally free!  If you are about to be involved in, or are new to delivering workplace learning, this is an excellent resource to help people learn and apply that learning for free!  This is high quality training complete with proper certification from a recognised training provider and is available totally free until 17th June, 2013.  Click here to make use of this meaningful free course or for more information on e-learning and the courses they provide visit www.social-care.tv or call them on 01953 853070.

HomeCareDirect knows how important quality training is and the training for our personal assistants is truly personalised so they can fully meet the needs of the client they are working with and all our training is to CQC standard.

Care services minister Norman Lamb vows to remove barriers to joined up services to improve the services for people with long-term conditions and value for money and therefore integrate health and social care for everyone by 2018.

The Learning Disability Today Exhibition was attended by representatives of Sheffield City Council, and Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust, who are also supporting the event, workers in the health and social care sector, and plenty of people with learning disabilities.

It was a full day of seminars and an exhibition to share good practice, to help us all to deliver services that improve the lives of people with learning disabilities. We had a great time and found it very informative – a very positive and worthwhile event to help us at HomeCareDirect learn more about what is available for people with learning disabilities and also to let people know about the services we offer for people with personal budgets and direct payments.

If you attended the event we’d love to hear what you thought, please get in touch with us here.

‘betty’ is making a third series of the romantic and insightful documentary series for Channel 4.

They will be following disabled people and those with a variety of conditions through the highs and lows of finding love. If you are single and looking for love please get in touch with them on 0207 290 0223 or email undateables@betty.co.uk.

They are looking for people who might be potentially interested in taking part in the third series and of the vibrant, romantic and insightful documentary series ‘The Undateables’ which will follow disabled people and those with a variety of conditions on their quest to find love. The series will also aim to explore society’s attitude towards disabled people and how this can affect relationships.

They are currently in the process of talking to a number of organisations, including leading disability networks and charities, about the series idea and to ensure the issues are handled sensitively.

‘betty’ will work with one or more introductions agencies that find matches for their clients across the UK, based on what has been specified by that client in terms of common interests, likes, dislikes, and location. ‘betty’ will be closely involved with the matching process and work with the agencies, seeking to provide introductions with both disabled and non-disabled people. The agencies, and ‘betty’, will consult when necessary with people with expertise in the areas of disability or impairment, on-screen or off-screen, for advice and guidance.

The series will follow key mile-stones in our contributors’ journeys and explore their thoughts and feelings about their experiences along the way. From meeting the agency and getting their dating profile set up to preparing for their first date, they will document the highs and lows of their journey. The intention is that there would also be an accompanying information and help web-pages for viewers.

The first and second series were a huge success in both ratings and critical acclaim. They were ‘pick of the day’ in most major newspapers.

‘Gentle, careful and respectful’ – The Telegraph

‘Beautifully done’ – The Guardian

‘The Undateables proved to be a highly worthwhile and rewarding series. The lesson? These people weren’t really undateable at all.’ – Metro

If you’d like to take part in the third series of The Undateables please get in touch with ‘betty’ by calling 0207 290 0223 or email undateables@betty.co.uk.  Your application will be received by a member of ‘betty’s’ production company and they will contact you directly. ‘betty’ will process your personal data in accordance with their privacy policy.

We hear at Home Care Direct would love to hear your stories of looking for love and your thoughts on the Channel 4 documentaries, The Undateables so please get in touch with us here.

Right at the heart of it you’ll find three key messages that can go a long way to improving oral health. They are:

• Brush your teeth for two minutes twice a day using fluoride toothpaste
• Cut down on how often you have sugary foods and drinks
• Visit the dentist regularly, as often as they recommend

Sounds simple? You’d think so, but there’s evidence to suggest not everyone keeps to these three most basic of messages. National Smile Month is a great opportunity for those who don’t to take stock of their oral health habits, and a great opportunity for those who do to pass the message onto others. Organised by the British Dental Health Foundation, National Smile Month was established in 1976. Now into its 37th year, the campaign has helped to change the oral health landscape of the UK.

The proportion of the population with no natural teeth in England, Northern Ireland and Wales has fallen to just six per cent in 2009. In 1978, the figure was as high as 37 per cent in Wales.  The majority of adults (71 per cent) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are now free of visible dental decay on the surfaces of their teeth.

In 2009, two thirds (66.6 per cent) of children aged 12 were found to be free of visible dental decay. In 1973, this figure was less than 10 per cent. It’s not all smiles, however. Research has shown oral health problems persist, with many people overlooking the value of good oral health. More than a third of adults are likely to delay dental treatment due to cost. More than half of the UK workforce isn’t allowed to take paid leave off work to visit their dentist.

60 per cent of people aged 65 and over regret not looking after their teeth earlier in life.
In 2013 National Smile Month has once again teamed up with three giants of oral health care to deliver a campaign to remember. They are delighted to stand alongside Wrigley, Oral-B and Listerine who are helping to make everyone smile in 2013 with their generous charitable support. Getting involved in the campaign couldn’t be simpler – submit your interest in taking part and they’ll send you lots of great information, including five free smileys on a first-come first-serve basis!

Check out the National Smile Month Website here and make sure you look after your teeth.  If you’d like to share your smiles with us here at Home Care Direct, please get in touch here.

Find Me Good Care are inviting providers and users of care services to share their pictures of ‘good care’.  You can submit your images on Twitter using #goodcarepics or upload directly to their Facebook page.

Have a look at the latest entries and add your #goodcarepics now on @findmegoodcare or Facebook.  There are some lovely pictures on there and they have brought a smile to our faces here at Home Care Direct, great Friday feeling.

If you’d like to share your pictures with us please get in touch here.

The CQC hopes to regain credibility with care providers by ensuring all its staff specialise in inspecting particular health or social care services, chief executive David Behan has said.  Behan acknowledged that the CQC’s generic model of inspection – under which staff have been responsible for inspecting the full range of services covered by the CQC – had raised “issues about credibility” over the quality of inspection, particularly among care providers.

“This is a question, if people are generic rather than specialist, about what their background knowledge is about the organisations they are inspecting. I want to tackle that head-on and say we want inspectors to specialise,” he said.

Generic inspection model scrapped – Behan was talking to Community Care following the publication last week of the CQC’s strategy for 2013-16, under which the regulator would scrap its generic model by getting staff to specialise, inspecting different sectors against different standards and increasingly varying the frequency of inspections of services based on risk.

“How we inspect an international teaching hospital, a three-bedded are home for people with autism and challenging behaviour and a dentist will need to be different, “he said. “To date CQC has had a consistent approach to all three. That’s not going to work in the future.”

Behan added that, while all staff would specialise, some would be specialists who had a professional background in the sector they inspected, particularly where the services in question involved individuals at particular risk.

“People who are judging the difference between a good service for people with autism and a poor one need to have some idea about what good looks like,” he said. “Some people with autism don’t like light; if you didn’t know that you might go into a service and ask why it is in the dark.”

He said the strategy involved significant changes for CQC staff, which would be tackled by establishing a training academy for them and using secondments between the regulator and health and social care services, “so people get to know us and people in CQC get to know services”.

Changes to inspection frequency - While the CQC will continue with its existing model of doing one scheduled inspection of each service in 2013-14, higher-performing services would receive fewer inspections in future on the basis of reduced risk to service users, said Behan. The strategy also promises to increase inspections where there is a higher risk of harm to users or people are vulnerable because of their circumstances, such as in learning disability or mental health services or home care.

However, the CQC will not increase the number of scheduled inspections for these sectors; instead it is likely to carry out more “responsive” inspections that arise from concerns about services, based upon a better use of information to “identify, predict and respond more quickly to services that are failing, or are likely to fail”.

The strategy also heralds the replacement of the CQC’s existing 28 essential standards of quality and safety, against which it inspects all providers, by five “fundamental standards” examining whether services are safe, caring, effective, well-led and responsive to people’s needs. Behan said different sets of standards would be designed for different sectors under these five headings.

“In a hospital there are a number of things that we will need to look at to see if it is safe or effective and the things we need to look at will be slightly different in a care home and different again in a domiciliary care agency.”

Return of care ratings – As announced by government last month, the CQC will also reintroduce quality ratings for social care services, which will assess how far services surpass the fundamental standards. The quality ratings system is likely to have been developed by the autumn and grade services’ performance at one of at least four levels.

Behan said that the ratings would help care providers benchmark themselves against each other, driving up performance, and also enhance choice for families in choosing care services, by enabling them to “sort and sift the best”.

The strategy will also introduce a tougher test for organisations looking to register new services. This is in response to the government’s desire to increase corporate accountability for service quality in the wake of Castlebeck’s management’s failure to exercise effective oversight over Winterbourne View.

In future, providers will be asked to identify a person responsible for quality within an organisation and what they will do to maintain standards, as a condition of registration. Behan said this would enable the CQC to challenge these individuals to make improvements where services fall short of standards, under the threat of enforcement action and being “named and shamed” by the regulator.

Home Care Direct welcomes these changes to CQC inspections as we truly beleive people desevere the highest quality care at home services and improvements to all services can always be made.  Share your thoughts with us here.