BEST PRACTICE SPONSOR 2020
THE PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW
Highlighting best practice
46 | RHODSAC COMMUNITY LIVING LTD
Our care objectives
Each of our homes aims to:
»Offer skilled care to enable people
who live with us to achieve their
optimum state of health and
wellbeing
»Treat all people who live and work
at the home and all people who visit
with respect at all times
»Support individual personal decision-
making as the right of all service
users and treat them with dignity
and respect at all times
»Recognise individual needs for
personal fulfilment of service users
and offer individualised programmes
of meaningful activity to satisfy those
needs
»Recruit the highest calibre of
professional and dedicated staff
One of the main objectives of the
CQC inspection reports is to assess
how well the care home is managed,
and effectively utilising care home
management software has been
instrumental in helping to meet
these requirements. The system has
helped to manage and organise the
operations of the care home on site as
well as remotely.
Care plans are an essential part of
our care homes’ effort to provide the
most beneficial care to the residents.
The plans are person centred and
involve the input of the resident and
their family, which helps us to make
sure the plan is accurate and offering
accommodation that meets the specific
needs of the individual.
Recruitment and retention
As with the care home sector in
general, some of the key challenges
that we face concern the recruitment
and retention of support workers. In
order to maintain the safety of the
residents in our homes, we operate
continual recruitment drives due to the
high turnover of staff.
Fortunately, we have managed to
retain our staff due to our policy of
open management, which encourages
participation in meetings. For example,
where there is strategic change, we
involve staff and update them all the
time. This makes staff feel part of
our team and aids problem solving.
When we succeed, there is a feeling
of communal ownership and identity
within our company.
Training our staff
Given these competing priorities, it
is hardly surprising that one of the
greatest challenges that we face today
is ensuring that our care home staff
are competent in the planning and
delivery of their care.
Care home staff are eager to receive
training, but there are often barriers
to providing the highest levels of
this, such as providing cover staff
for trainees and the need for staff
to devote some of their own time to
training sessions.
Person-centred activities
of the service user’s
choice
Our philosophy
is simple:
individuals
with mental
problems and
learning
disabilities
have the same
rights as any
other members
of society and
will be treated
as such
“
“
47RHODSAC COMMUNITY LIVING LTD |
Personal and company
growth
We aim to maintain our high
standards of one-on-one care as our
business becomes more successful
and expands. Inevitably this presents
its own dilemma – senior staff with
advanced clinical training must
inevitably spend more working hours
on time-consuming and often routine
administrative matters.
Our policy has been to expand the
core of management personnel
commensurate with the needs and
demands of our growing numbers
of residents and teams of dedicated
care workers. Our growth has been
stagnated by the delay in payments
from our local authority and the
discrepancies in how local authority
prices are being raised. There is a
strong resistance in paying for the
actual needs for the residents as there
is worry about Brexit’s impact on the
economy, which has resulted in us not
providing the best quality of care that
our residents demand.
Employment issues
In order to reconcile the tightening
constraints of local authority funding
with the increasing demand for care
services across the country, the sector
inevitably employs a large number of
low-wage staff, but with the living
wage increasing at a rate that is not
relative, it will become more complex
for us to keep our staff in the future.
Recent achievements
Technological advancements in the
health and social care industry have
helped us to assist our home managers
so that we can efficiently manage the
services we provide.
Innovative care management software,
for example, has been designed to
help with the general day-to-day
tasks of a care home. It has brought
an array of advantages that our care
homes are benefiting from. It has also
helped to ensure our organisation is
run smoothly and reduces some of the
pressures on our managers and staff.
All health records that are stored
digitally have the ability to be
quickly edited as the database and
all documents stored on it can be
accessed easily. This allows them to
be reviewed quickly by staff when
a resident’s requirements develop
or change. Having the capability to
providepoint-of-care recordinghas
helped our care homes’ efficiency
and our ability to ensure that all
information concerning residents
is accurate and up to date. Using
resources such as these, we are
confident we will continue to be able
to respond to the need for a better
quality of care.
Technological
advancements in
the health and
social care
industry have
helped us to
assist our home
managers so that
we can efficiently
manage the
services we
provide
“
“
Above: Service users
visited Corfe Castle
while on holiday in
Swanage
Below: International
food day
Rt Hon The Lord David Blunkett
Rt Hon The Lord Eric Pickles
