FEATURE
In Strict Competence
Preparing for the new Care Act means taking a new approach to mitigating risk and assessing the knowledge of your team explains Mary Clarke, CEO at Cognisco.
The Care Act that came into force in April 2015 has far-reaching consequences for care home providers. They are now required to show evidence of ongoing staff development and training. Not only that, they will have to prove that the learning in those sessions has been instilled into staff and acted upon.
The Minister for Care, Norman Lamb, described the new Care Act “as the most significant reform of care and support in 60 years”. Care home owners need to understand its implications and not just pay lip service to the new legislation.
In a recent interview, Angela Sutcliffe, Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care for the Care Quality Commission, talked about the need for care home managers to both see and evidence levels of capability and confidence in their staff. She highlighted the importance of identifying specific gaps in training requirements for each staff member, and how training must be focused on delivering for the needs of the people using care services.
Ms Sutcliffe made specific reference to this approach to training being particularly important for carers working with people living with dementia. She highlighted that care home staff must have the right training and knowledge to deal with people with dementia so they truly understand the condition and can apply their knowledge in practice.
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The success of any care home relies on the management and staff providing a safe, caring and compassionate service to the people they look after and, to provide assurance that this is the case, it is imperative that managers understand both the competency and confidence of their staff. They need to be aware of their human risk and the potential financial losses and reputational damage that could occur if people make mistakes.
While many care homes will have training and development programmes in place, and incident reporting logs as demanded by the Care Quality Commission, it’s not always clear how much staff really understand and whether they can actually apply this knowledge on the job. The majority of staff in care homes perform their jobs well and provide a high level of care, but a small minority do not and this is something that needs to be addressed urgently.
There is a new approach to training and development that could help care home owners fulfil the requirements of the new Care Act and mitigate risk across their operations. We’ve developed a unique assessment for carers in conjunction with care operator, Belong that gives UK care home providers accurate insight into the competence and confidence of carers working with dementia sufferers.
The Dementia*Care assessment uses situational judgement questions
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based on real life scenarios to test carers’ knowledge, competence and confidence in all areas of their roles.
The modules test a carer’s knowledge on a range of subjects including resident’s health and “lived” experience, their understanding of dementia and care strategies and how to deliver patient centred care.
Any gaps and weaknesses in the carer’s knowledge or confidence are highlighted in the results so care home managers can see at a glance how they are performing and also how they are likely to think, act and behave in their roles.
Gaining accurate insight into the competence of their workforce means care home providers can better plan their recruitment strategies and deliver better, more targeted training which is aligned to an individual’s needs.
This bespoke approach reduces training costs as carers will only need to be trained in areas where it is needed most, rather than a more expensive ‘one size fits all’ approach. It aims to raise standards of dementia care in the UK and provide care home owners with a simple, highly accurate and affordable way of measuring competency.
www.cognisco.com
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