Hugo de Savary's – living with learning disabilities.

Archive for the ‘Care in the News’ Category

A couple of weeks ago I caught the tail end of an excellent program on Radio 4 which I’ve been meaning to share on here but caught it again last Monday quite by chance. Julie Fernandez who played Brenda the wheelchair user in ‘The Office’, is in real life an advocate for disability rights.

The programme  Caring too Much, explores the complex relationship between disabled child and parent carer. It is certainly thought provoking and emotive and is a must for anyone facing these issues in the near future.
To hear it, click on the link and fast forward past the news:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0138vgk

What a relief to see that Winterbourne View, the hospital featured in the Panorama investigation is closing today.  There is plenty of discussion about whether these sort of private hospitals are appropriate in today’s society. Leading figures in Learning Disabilities have lent their names in a petition to the prime minister to end these placements – as the “model is wrong and does not work”. David Brindle of the Guardian has written a piece which is both informative and constructive.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/joepublic/2011/jun/22/private-hospitals-winterbourne-view-learning-disabilities-should-close

You and Yours on Radio 4, hosted by Julian Worricker broadcast an informative show today for those with loved ones with learning disabilities such as autism, and goes through the various models of care available to those in later life. The BBC must be commended for their actions over the last few weeks with regards to this whole area, but ought to make a link available on BBC iplayer, so as to be able to listen to this again.

For those who may have missed the programme:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b011v1bn/You_and_Yours_14_06_2011/

Following my 2 previous posts on Southerncross and the Panorama expose, I did a  follow up piece that appeared in this weekend’s Sunday Times main section, describing the lengths to which HFHC is approaching care. Massive thanks go out to everyone who had their input on this. This was the full version before the final edit:

Thirty-two years ago, my sister Laura was born; soon afterwards, she was diagnosed with a complex learning disability. My parents were told: “She might live, she might not, but by the way, good luck.” At each stage of her life we have tried to get the best for Laura, but when it came to caring for her in adult life, the options available didn’t measure up to what we believed she deserved. So we created Home from Home Care, now a small group of residential care homes providing care for some 40 people from over 21 local authorities with epilepsy, autism, cerebral palsy and a range of other special needs. Read the rest of this entry »

Joe Casey the Panorama journalist has to be commended for putting himself through the ordeal of witnessing these dreadful actions and for keeping his cool to record the damning evidence to charge these monsters.

I felt absolutely sick watching this footage and was left having nightmares remembering what happened to my sister before she came to HFHC at her previous placement, when she was dragged by a support worker down the corridor by her hair. What was shown last night was care from a bygone age where, despite plenty of money available (over £3500 a week/placement) and modern premises, systematic failure still occurred. This illustrates that you certainly can’t judge a leopard by its spots.

Structured home activities seemed to be in-existent, boredom rife, abuse and torture plentiful, and management controls lacking robustness and solely in place to pay lip service.  This raises wider questions about the company’s recruitment, training and quality assurance procedures. These staff should not have slipped through the recruitment process, and if they had, then they certainly should have been picked out during their training if they weren’t displaying the right values and ethos. Failing these milestones at the very least, the quality assurance aspect of the organisation should have been on top of this, especially in light of the conviction of a support worker for violent conduct towards a service user from the same home a couple months prior to the Panorama investigation. What was demonstrated was a culture certainly not fit for purpose.

All the stakeholders involved at Winterbourne View from the owners, senior managers and the regulatory bodies should be ashamed of what has happened and should take a very close look at whether they should be working in this sector. This is a sector that requires of its individuals the utmost integrity, due to the trust placed upon them by families and the wider society. Unfortunately, in this case, it appears that these stakeholders failed to meet the most fundamental needs of these vulnerable adults, notably to feel safe and secure.

For those who missed this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011pwt6#synopsis

Here is a my tuppence worth blog post on Southern  Cross which has been hitting the financial pages because of the financial crisis. It is also starting to creep on to the main pages due to its sheer size as it is the largest provider in the sector and carries some impressive stats… In the UK it has over 750 homes, 38,000 beds, 31,000 residents and over 40,000 employees,predominantly it specialise in eldercare but also learning disabilities.

Why then, you might ask, is this company hitting the news for all the wrong reasons? Read the rest of this entry »

The humble HFHC brochure designed back in the days before our first home  opened in Oct 2004 (the Old Hall) has finally undergone a major facelift. Much work has been put in by the team to create a new look with revised content, that explicitly sets out the services that HFHC offers.

It’s been an astonishing process, as it has brought to the forefront to all of us how much HFHC has evolved over the last 6 years, becoming a specialist provider based in Lincolnshire that now supports individuals from over 21 local authorities nationwide – and as a family we are immensely proud to be associated with it.  We recognise that in the face of the severe cuts that the Health and Social Care sector is being subjected to, we must embrace this changing paradigm. This change through shrinking budgets doesn’t have to be to the detriment of the people that we support. We really believe that we can continue to create better outcomes through our creative and innovative approach which should safeguard the continuation of providing higher levels of service and excellence for the individuals who use our service.

Check out the brochure here!

First blog post of 2011 and I find myself writing it in North Wales…in the midst of economic gloom, government cuts and the vague talk of snow on the horizon, and again we find ourselves on the road speaking at schools and colleges.

The structured environment that these specialist schools and colleges have provided over the last 15 years to their pupils, has also for parents brought about structure and a temporary sense of normality and security to the tough grind of raising a child with a learning disability. In most cases, parents have a niggling uncomfortable feeling, growing like a nasty tumour as the years go by, about what happens when school ends and the safety net has disappeared (see post March 20th, 2010). This year I will meet hundreds of parents in similar predicaments and generally the same chain of events happens.

Mothers hover around our stand, reading the brief literature on the boards, whilst plucking up the courage to find out a bit more…it’s etched on their faces that this experience of having to go through this decision process on their child’s future, is uncomfortable and possibly the most harrowing to date. Read the rest of this entry »

For Lincolnshire the start of Dec 2010 will be remembered for a long time due to the inhospitable weather conditions, the worse since 1965. With over a foot of snow and freezing temperatures, hundreds of villages became cut off due to the impassable roads.

Home From Home Care has several specialist care homes in the villages cut off, which are supporting 24/7 some of the most vulnerable individuals in our society. Many have autism, high levels of epilepsy and other complex health needs, and the thought that our staff teams who are trained to support these people not being able to get into work didn’t bare thinking about.

What happened in the face of this potential crisis is one that my family is incredibly proud of and as the saying goes man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit and that is precisely what was witnessed over the proceeding days.

Read the rest of this entry »

Now a decade into the 21^st Century and technological developments have raced ahead, helping to remove some of the barriers and challenges to delivering care. Most families with children have used the humble baby monitor but dig deeper and there is a whole host of technological solutions that can change the lives of both carers and vulnerable individuals which can provide continuous, automatic and remote monitoring over time such as Telecare, which helps manage the risks associated with independent living.

Telecare it has to be said, can provide some magical life changing solutions to debilitating problems that in the past would have been extremely difficult to overcome and costly to manage. Due to these advantages, Telecare has become prevalent in many aspects of healthcare. Within the eldercare sector, it is used to allow the elderly who start to display vulnerabilities to stay longer in their own homes. Within Learning Disabilities it is widely used within Supported Living and in an organisation like HFHC that delivers specialist care, it also has its place especially in our mews properties setup for those who wish to sample greater independence within a structured environment.

With serious spending cuts taking place and more on the horizon, Telecare is seen as a major solution due to the associated cost benefits – but just like the arguments for CCTV as a substitute for fewer policemen on the streets, the camera may record the criminal act being committed, but there are no assurances that it brings the criminal act to an end.

Unfortunately the same must apply to Telecare, so that the vulnerable aren’t put at risk due to an overreliance on these monitoring solutions. It must be used to support the delivery of care, but in no way must it be seen as a viable substitute to people performing the care function.