Carer Support Wiltshire and Observer backed John’s Campaign wins support from the NHS.
A significant milestone has been reached by John’s Campaign, the rapidly growing project to break down institutionalised barriers in the NHS and allow carers of people with dementia who are admitted to hospital to be able to stay with them or visit them at any time. Hospitals across the UK are now set to change their policies to allow better access for carers
You can read the full story in the Observer here.
The Pensions minister is urging firms to voluntarily incorporate ‘family care leave’ into contracts.
Companies could suffer a manpower crisis within the next decade unless they find ways to enable middle-aged and older workers to take time off for care commitments in a similar way to the flexibility afforded to parents, Baroness Altmann has warned.
The peer, a former director general of Saga, urged firms to voluntarily incorporate “family care leave” into contracts, otherwise millions of valued and experienced workers could be forced to retire early. Lady Altmann is leading a task force of business and union leaders to develop a form of flexible leave to avert the potentially crippling exodus of experience from the economy.
Full report in the Telegraph.
Wiltshire’s Home from Hospital service has passed a milestone: in just one year, Carer Support Wiltshire’s pioneering service received more than 1,200 referrals and created savings in excess of £370,000 for health and social care.
Wiltshire’s Home from Hospital programme, run by Carer Support Wiltshire in partnership with Age UK Salisbury and Wiltshire, is now being looked at by other local authorities, which run similar schemes with a focus on carers in their area.
Working out of the three main acute hospitals which serve the county and extending into the community through the partnership and volunteers, Home from Hospital helps patients by making welfare checks, checking that the home is warm and comfortable, that there’s some shopping in and that the right onward services are in place. Volunteers help link the person back into community networks and break down isolation.
One elderly disabled carer from Trowbridge, whose husband had received the service, said: “Home from Hospital was absolutely brilliant, a life saver and I don’t know what we would have done without the service.”
Staff based in the three acute hospitals – Great Western in Swindon, Salisbury District Hospital and the Royal United Hospital in Bath - helped 734 patients leave hospital with 370 receiving ongoing support in the community from volunteers managed by Age UK.
Home from Hospital costs £210,000 to run and is funded by the Better Care Fund, money pooled between Wiltshire Clinical Commissioning Group and Wiltshire Council to drive health and social care integration and help reduce hospital admissions and delayed discharges.
Catharine Hurford, chief executive of CSW, said: “We are delighted that the project has made such an impact after only a year in place in its current form. We know the difference it makes to the people we are helping. It also helps us reach unpaid family carers in our hospitals often at a time of crisis when their loved-one’s condition can have changed markedly and ensure we can offer timely support.
“Our Home from Hospital programme – which we reported on at the Carers Trust national conference – is playing its part in reducing hospital attendance, reducing length of stays in hospital, cutting back on delayed discharges when people are medically fit to go home and cutting readmissions for the same condition.
“This project is exciting in a number of ways – it is a pathfinder for charities coming together to work together for patients in Wiltshire, but also for other similar services around the country as we have been able to be much more proactive in identifying and supporting family carers. It has directly led to other initiatives in the hospitals including the Carer Hub in the atrium of Bath RUH. Other commissioners have approached us for more information on the scheme and we know of one service which has had its commissioning model changed to include carers following our work.”
