Insight


Balancing the conflict of choice and responsibility


Ed Watkinson, a former care home inspector who consults for Quality Compliance Systems, reflects on the Covid pandemic and the arising conflicting pressures of individual choice and collective responsibility


In the article I wrote for The Care Home Environment magazine in September, I put forward a positive view of the future for care homes and encouraged everyone to be more ‘Tigger’ and less ‘Eeyore’. I stand by what I said and still think there is a lot to look forward to if we pull together, and if the vaccines deliver what is promised. Yet it has to be said life continues to


be hard and full of obstacles with an ever changing set of challenges to be met. As a service, you are consistently balancing priorities and trying to do the best you can for the people that use your service, and never has this been more challenging and complex than now. There is also the more general societal


feeling of becoming more ambivalent to risks, this is only natural now as people become more complacent and are experiencing risk fatigue as the impact of the pandemic has now been felt for more than a year. This is more prevalent in the wider population but some of this more generalised attitude I believe is bleeding into the care sector. In addition, it could be argued that we


are all to varying degrees confused by the guidance are feeling that we, through experience and common sense, know what is best and are starting to ‘make our own minds up’ about what we do in our own situation rather than what might be best for the whole population. An unintended consequence of this


change in attitude is that it does make it more difficult to impose or continue to


deliver services that strictly adhere to the guidance that are followed and believed in by all. One central concern that runs through challenges is how do you to take everyone on the journey, and ensure that they feel included and needed to be part of the solution? This can be difficult especially when


there are competing priorities and it can be difficult to see the benefits when the short-term individual impact of actions taken by care providers can appear to be restrictive or somewhat dictatorial, even


Looking beyond the pandemic, there can be some learning from this to drive your business forward in other areas


April 2021 • www.thecarehomeenvironment.com


when they are only following guidance and have the best interests of the wider population at heart. In social care, we fully understand the


need to deliver services that encourage and respect individual choice and indeed the Care Quality Commission (CQC) largely inspects and rates the quality of services on how well these aspects of care are provided. Yet how do we balance these ideals


with what we are having to do during the pandemic as actions for the collective good can appear to be the polar opposite of what services are currently required to do?


The vaccine question Moving on to talk a bit about specifics, Covid-19 vaccines are in most circles seen as the only long-term solution to the pandemic. The vast majority of people are very pleased to receive them and see them as the first step to returning to some kind of normality. There is however a small minority that does not trust the vaccines, and is worried about side-effects or do not think they


27


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57