A critical evaluation of a social care initiative in the UK – My home life Assignment | Get Homework Help
I have written the attached essay and would like some help with further background on the subject. Policy context about the growing numbers of older people, especially those with dementia, problems with the care home sector, and quality of life for residents. Also some help with presentation, clarity of expression and referencing.
My Home Life
Introduction
In this study there is going to be a critical evaluation of the health care initiative ‘My Home Life’. Person centred care, this is “an approach that puts the person receiving care and support at the centre of the way care is planned and delivered. It is based around you and your own needs, preferences and priorities” (Think Local Act Personal, 2015). Miller (Miller, Brown and Mangan, 2016) has stated that an initiative is “ a project or service that seeks to provide integrated care for individuals and their families by enabling better joint working across the relevant staff teams, services and organisations in health, social care and housing support service”.
‘My Home Life’ is an international integrated care provider founded in the year 2006 by the partnerships of the National Care Forum, Aged UK formally known as Help the Aged and City University (My Home Life, 2006). They have been looking into how care homes and the care received through them is being reported negatively. This Initiative has been created to help put a more positive view out to the public because care homes been shown to be badly presented in news articles, such as the Express paper titled “My mother’s 13 years of neglect in ‘care’ homes” (Wallis, 2018). This article was completely one sided and it doesn’t even look as though they attempted to get the staff members side of the story. This is how most articles are created, which is how care homes get such a bad reputation. This is why MHL is attempting to change this. A variety of organisations have been funding from 2005 to help towards delivering My Home Life and their outcomes. For example: Helped the Aged (now Age Uk ) helped create ‘Vision’ where they collected all of the evidence together to help achieve the best practice in care homes. BUPA Giving, funded towards the ‘Dissemination’ phase this allowed them to share any evidence to the care home sectors though the use of storytelling. Implementation was funded in 2009 by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and others such as City University. They worked tighter with the care home sector to create a leadership support programme to help forward improvement in quality in care homes. From 2013 to 2019 The Henry Smith Charity and Age Uk funded towards the last phase of Sustainability which was how help for others to work in better partnerships was created through community engagement. My Home Life has created a Transformation Package. This includes leadership support, integrated care, service and community development and engagement. They also look into how social actions can enhance the quality of the residents lives. This can be different activities such as bingo and day trips out. All of the aspects of the programme provided to the care homes is self-reported back to My Home Life to see the impact they are making. This programme allows the MHL team to be able to offer support to staff members in different care homes all over. Such as enhancing the communication between residents and staff. There has been an 90% increase in the quality of life of the residents and a 92% increase of the staff’s leadership and communication skills (My Home Life, 2016).
The reason why this particular initiative is going to be looked into is because My Home Life are trying to bring more positivity towards care home’s. In 2017 out of “10,858 residential care homes over 2,600 were rated inadequate or requires improvement”. (Bodkin, 2017). They have evidence to also show that part of what they are doing is reducing the pressures of administrations of elderly patients on the NHS. In the years 2018-2019 ambulance call outs from care homes have decreased by 5% compared to two years ago. This is because the care homes have become more involved with My Home Life. The MHL staff have delivered leadership support to the care home’s staff members. They also discuss what local health services the care home are close to which offer simple procedures and medication. “67% of participants reported that their understanding of what local health services exist that they can access had increased during the programme”. There has also been a 6% decrease of A&E visits (Owen, 2019). MHL organisations run on the spirit of helping others and producing a more positive focus.
Description
My Home Life is an organisation that bases in England but has partners in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, Germany and Australia (My Home Life, 2016). My Home Life has been created to look into how they can change the way care homes are improving the quality of life for the care home residents by creating a more person centred approach. They have done this by working around investing in advocacy projects and looking at how their teamwork can be productive and become a better partnership with each other and other outside partnerships. They aim to complete this to enable those to have the best quality of life. Looking at this initiative we have been able to see three main focuses that make it up. Research, Enterprise and Social Action. Professor Julienne Meyer CBE is the executive director of My Home Life and the lead of the research where they test and pilot new methods of working and then share the lessons that have been learnt. Tom Owen is the co-director of My Home Life and the lead of Enterprise where they deliver packages locally full of support and engagement which is supposed to help encourage quality improvement. The Lead of social action is Jennifer Lindfield she works together with local care homes, public, practitioners and policy makers to help forward a shared vision for the quality of their life (My Home Life, 2016). Some aspects of this vision are that they want a higher carer and user involvement in the care homes. They would also like to see more activities happening to enhance the resident’s quality of life. This teams fits in to the Transformational theory by the ways they work together. As said by Bass “Leaders broaden and elevate the interests of their [followers], when they generate awareness and acceptance of the purposes and mission of the group, and when they steer their [followers] to look beyond their own self-interest for the good of the group” (Bass, 1990). This theory declares that this sort of team may take each other’s ideas into consideration and work together as a team by acting in one another’s interest to build trust. The principles that they work around which demonstrate this are ‘caring conversations’; such as making sure they are aware to what is being said and considering each-other’s perspectives. For example: MHL asked a fellow friend of theirs who specialises in Dementia communication to help them understand how they can do better to connect with older people, Specifically those with cognitive impairments (Reed, 2018). This allowed them to be able to offer more specific support from a visual rehabilitation worker or occupational therapist (Sight and hearing loss, n.d.). Being appreciative’; to be able to look at what is working well, and how working well as a team can help offer the different strengths from others. ‘Developing best practice together’ where they work with keeping the elderly’s identity by sharing the decision making and including them in as many choices as possible. Last principle is ‘focusing on relationships’; making sure they feel they have a purpose, create own aims to achieve. Asking them what would help them feel they are safe in their rooms and if not how they feel this could be improved (My Home Life, 2016).
Evaluation
This initiative has had a significant impact with their aims. The changing of the way care homes are viewed when evaluated in reports and how media stories focusing on the more positive stories has made a particular positive impact, when it came to the delivery of leadership support. These impacts and aims are delivered by the staff members of the company who help make sure relatives and residents are safe and happy. Volunteers are also able to help by the evaluation of the service’s provided by this initiative this has helped determine that there is a high demand towards helping the elderlies with their care. This is where the costs of residential living and medical treatments can lead to bad outcomes. The way this initiative looks into the methods used to help those in need is impacted through particular leadership. Prior to the Care Act 2014, they endorsed in to the care and support white paper, as well as the Demos commission on Residential Care 2014. When looking at these both we have been able to see that they are quite effective because they are able to show differences that have been made. For example; creating the ‘person centred system’ where they have transformed people’s ability to be in control. When evaluating you have to look into any potential ethical issues that could be occurring such as making sure they have full consent when it comes to delivering treatments or any harms or benefits that they may have, need to be dealt with (Bollig, Schmidt, Rosland and Heller, 2015). For example: making sure when trying to achieve their aims that they do not put any of the elderly people in difficult situations. This makes them more vulnerable and can make it more difficult for them to communicate if they feel they are unsafe. This is how MHL has impacted as they have helped staff members focus on the relationships between the staff and care homes residents. Another way the initiative could have developed their principle to focus on making individuals feel safe is by bringing in more team members to assist to the delivery. Such as delivering safer equipment, making quiet and spacious environments and supporting them face to face with good communication skills. When it comes to evaluating this initiative there has been a large amount of documentation to state how well it was delivered. The way it was designed demonstrates that it is a well skilled company which works well to promote care homes more positively and help those living in care homes to feel more reassured. Looking at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report My Home Life has been explored through a three year study between 2009 to 2012. The findings of this evaluation has stated that MHL “places the experience of frail and vulnerable older people at the heart of it all that it does” (Owen and Meyer, 2012).
Conclusion
To conclude this case study the findings that have been discussed have been able to demonstrate that My Home Life has shown that care homes reputation has been improved significantly. Through the ways their aims have helped improve communication between staff and residents. The whole team’s leadership skills have been able to also impact the way their support is delivered. According to Nurses.co.uk after a survey from the public’s view on what influences their opinion on care homes “49% of those surveyed said that their opinions on the industry were influenced by the media” (Farrah, 2019). This came as a shock to the care home managers because they believed that negative headlines in newspapers had a higher influence on the public. When it comes to the negative stereotypes that care homes feel they have there are ways that may help. Such as inviting the press to attend visiting days like the ‘International and National Care Home Open Day’ (My Home Life, 2018). They are then able to publish more positive stories which will help with reassuring the care home managers. There is also the thought of doing more community based projects like the ‘Creating communities; Great outcomes for both residents and young people’ experience where they allowed local schools to make meaningful relationships with the care homes (My Home Life, 2019). To this day the MHL programme has “supported over 250 care home managers through its leadership support activity” (Owen and Meyer, 2012).
References
Alzheimer’s Society. n.d. Sight And Hearing Loss. [online] Available at: <https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/about-dementia/symptoms-and-diagnosis/sight-hearing-loss> [Accessed 11 April 2020].
Bass, B., 1990. From transactional to transformational leadership: Learning to share the vision. Organizational Dynamics, 18(3), pp.19-31.
Bodkin, H., 2017. One In Four Care Homes Unsafe, Says Watchdog As Experts Criticise ‘Russian Roulette’ In Social Care. [online] The Telegraph. Available at: <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/05/one-four-care-homes-unsafe-says-watchdog-experts-criticise-russian/> [Accessed 15 April 2020].
Bollig, G., Schmidt, G., Rosland, J. and Heller, A., 2015. Ethical challenges in nursing homes – staff’s opinions and experiences with systematic ethics meetings with participation of residents’ relatives. Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences, 29(4), pp.810-823.
Farrah, M., 2019. The Surprising Truth About How The Public Perceive Care Homes. [online] Nurses.co.uk. Available at: <https://www.nurses.co.uk/nursing/blog/the-surprising-truth-about-how-the-public-perceive-care-homes/> [Accessed 7 April 2020].
Miller, R., Brown, H. and Mangan, C., 2016. Integrated Care In Action. London, UK: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Myhomelife.org.uk. 2006. My Home Life. [online] Available at: <https://myhomelife.org.uk> [Accessed 14 April 2020].
Myhomelife.org.uk. 2018. My Home Life. [online] Available at: <https://myhomelife.org.uk/news/international-national-care-home-open-day/> [Accessed 14 April 2020].
Myhomelife.org.uk. 2019. My Home Life. [online] Available at: <https://myhomelife.org.uk/creating-communities-great-outcomes-for-both-residents-and-young-people/> [Accessed 7 April 2020].
Owen, T. and Meyer, J., 2012. My Home Life: Promoting Quality Of Life In Care Homes. [ebook] York UK: Joesph Rowntree Foundation. Available at: <https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/21005/1/care-home-quality-of-life-full.pdf> [Accessed 14 April 2020].
Owen, T., 2019. Reducing NHS Pressures. [ebook] My Home Life. Available at: <http://myhomelife.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Reducing-NHS-pressures-201219.pdf> [Accessed 19 April 2020].
Reed, S., 2018. My Home Life | Good Care, Mean Good Communication. [online] Myhomelife.org.uk. Available at: <https://myhomelife.org.uk/good-care-mean-good-communication/> [Accessed 20 April 2020].
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Wallis, L., 2018. My Mother’s 13 Years Of Neglect In ‘Care’ Homes. [online] Express.co.uk. Available at: <https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/life/982158/care-home-system-neglect-dementia-sufferer-lynne-wallis> [Accessed 9 April 2020].
