To learn more about our vacancies and an invite please call Maria on 01255 224680

To learn more about our vacancies and an invite please call Maria on 01255 224680

Between 16-30 Hours – Shifts to include Weekends.

Support Workers required to work within the Colchester area, enabling Older People, Adults & Children with a learning disability and physical impairments to live as independently as possible within their own homes.  To assist with light domestic duties, meal preparation, shopping and to help with personal care. Hours of work generally to assist first thing in the morning, around mealtimes and bedtime support. Induction Training is provided. NVQ 2 in Health and Social Care is not essential as you will have the opportunity to gain. Drivers with use of own vehicle is essential.  Primary Care UK Limited is committed to safeguarding children, young people, and vulnerable adults. All appointments are subject to a satisfactory enhanced CRB disclosure

Home Carer Job Description and Job Details

Hours of work  37.5

Primary Care UK Limited is committed to safeguarding children, young people, and vulnerable adults. All appointments are subject to a satisfactory enhanced Criminal Records Bureau disclosure

To apply and for further information go to www.apprenticeships.org.uk ref 137131

This guide aims to help people when choosing a support provider.

It has been developed by the Voluntary Organisations Disability Group (VODG).

http://www.crossroads.org.uk/_downloads/_associati……..

From January to March 2012, Mencap will hold a series of events to tell people about cuts happening in their area, and to explore ways we can fight them together.

The Big Cuts events will highlight a range of services being cut across the country, and show how these cuts are affecting people with a learning disability and their families. If you are worried about how the cuts could change the help, support and benefits you get, come along to one of the Big Cuts events.

For more information see link

http://www.mencap.org.uk/bigcutsevent

Adult care, housing and health should be brought under a single commissioner in each area to improve support for older people and help solve social care’s funding crisis, an influential group of MPs said today.

The health select committee said care services for older people in England were still highly fragmented, despite successive governments’ commitment to integration, and real progress could only be made by bringing the commissioning of health, housing and adult social care together.

“It is impossible to deliver either high quality or efficient services when the patient is passed like a parcel from one part of the system to another, without any serious attempt to look at their needs in the round,” said committee chair Stephen Dorrell.

The committee also said current levels of adult social care funding were inadequate, with a rising funding gap between need and resource, and that public spending on older people needed to be rebalanced away from acute hospital care towards preventive health and social care in the community.

This could only be achieved by full integration that would enable a single commissioner to shift resources around the system, also enabling the NHS to meet its steep target of delivering £20bn in savings from 2011-15.

The committee called on ministers to place a duty on councils and NHS clinical commissioning groups to create a single commissioning process for older people’s health, care and housing, pooling all public resources, with a single accountable officer.

This should be backed by an integrated legal framework for health and social care for older people, which should be implemented instead of the Law Commission’s proposals to create a single statute for adult social care.

The report was strongly backed by council, NHS and voluntary sector leaders, though disability charities stressed its findings were equally applicable to younger disabled adults as older people. However, the Local Government Association warned that integration alone would not be enough to solve social care’s funding problems.

“Structural reform will only take us so far and unless it is backed with the necessary funding the old, the frail and the infirm will not receive all the support they need and deserve,” said LGA community well-being board chair David Rogers.

The health select committee also called on the government to accept the principle of capping lifetime care costs faced for self-funders, as proposed by the Dilnot commission last year.

However, while Dilnot called for a national cap of £35,000, the committee warned that this did not take account of differences in the costs of care between areas, which would result in people in poorer areas taking longer to reach the cap than those with equivalent needs elsewhere.

It suggested that the government should look at instituting a cap based on time spent funding your own care.

More on the integration of health and social care

Guide to joint working between health and social care

Social workers must join renewed effort to integrate care

Enhance your practice

Attend Community Care’s forthcoming conference on supporting people with dementia.

Article source: http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2012/02/08/117964/mps-unify-health-and-social-care-to-tackle-funding-shortfall.html

Adult social workers feel pessimistic about the future of their practice because of bureaucracy and care management, but still believe they make a difference, The College of Social Work has found.

Fifty four per cent of respondents to a College survey disagreed with the statement, “I feel optimistic about the future of social work with adults”, with just 20% agreeing.

However, 95% felt that their work made a difference to people’s lives. Most respondents to the online survey were social workers currently practising in England.

The survey was published as the College launched a campaign to raise the standing of social work with adults and ensure that the forthcoming adult care White Paper gives a high priority to social work.

A key problem for practitioners was bureaucracy, with 88% of respondents agreeing that adult social work was held back by bureaucracy and performance targets, and several social workers complaining that paperwork had replaced client contact.

The College held a summit last Friday on the future of adult social work, attended by sector leaders, service users, practitioners and government officials, at which there was strong support for liberating social workers from bureaucracy so that they could exercise greater professional judgement.

The fact that many adult social workers’ roles consisted of care management was also a problem for survey respondents. Eighty five percent agreed that care management was not the same as social work, with several respondents complaining that the need to ration care meant social workers could not give people what they needed.

Among other findings:-

• 47% disagreed that integration with healthcare would enhance the standing of social work, while 26% agreed.
• 47% agreed that personalisation was likely to marginalise social workers, while 28% disagreed.
• 73% agreed that the approved mental health professional role required skills unique to social workers, despite being open to medical professionals.

Last Friday’s summit was told that social work would be given a high priority in the forthcoming White Paper, which will set out government plans to reform the funding and legal framework of adult social care.

However, the paper will not set out a series of roles and tasks that should be unique to social work, said Department of Health director for people, communities and local government Glen Mason, despite calls to do so from the British Association of Social Workers.

“The approach we are taking is not to narrow social work down to a set of prescribed functions in legislation that only social workers can do,” he told the summit. “I know that others disagree.” Mason said it was important that social workers were deployed across a broad range of tasks.

The online survey for the College had 119 respondents, 102 of whom were registered social workers and 12 of whom were social work students.

Photo: Rex Features

More on the College’s adult social work campaign

Personalisation ’wrongly used to devalue social workers’

Burstow: Social work to be at heart of care White Paper

What future for adult social work?

Enhance your practice

Attend Community Care’s forthcoming conferences on dementia care, serious case reviews and safeguarding adults at risk.

Article source: http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2012/02/06/117962/adult-social-workers-pessimistic-but-proud-finds-college.html

Social Care TV: Innovation – Living together