DoH Unveils Plan For Dementia Care
When care services minister Ivan Lewis recently admitted that the government was ‘failing’ people with dementia and their carers, he acknowledged what many nurses already knew to be tragic fact.
Read MoreWhen care services minister Ivan Lewis recently admitted that the government was ‘failing’ people with dementia and their carers, he acknowledged what many nurses already knew to be tragic fact.
Read MoreCouncils need to take the lead in attracting investment to social care services that meet people’s present and future needs, according to a new report entitled ‘Safe as Houses? What drives investment in social care?’
Read MoreChildren’s Secretary Ed Balls is to urge schools to teach teenagers how to handle their emotions as part of a drive to improve behaviour and has promised £14 million over four years to extend the social and emotional aspects of learning programme (Seal) running in primary schools into secondaries.
Read MoreThe Scottish Minister for Children and Early Years Adam Ingram has announced the appointment of a new Convener and five new Members to the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC).
Read MoreA council is seeking to employ extra staff to help check how many pensioners were wrongly charged for their care. The Dumfries and Galloway authority has set aside £1.5m to reimburse people who paid for food preparation which they were entitled to receive for free.
Read MoreThe appointment of five members to work with Lord Sutherland on his Independent Review of Free Personal Care have been confirmed. Anne Jarvie, Mary Marshall, Professor David Bell, Jim Dickie and Rory Mair have accepted an invitation from Nicola Sturgeon to sit on the independent review group.
Read MoreA leading charity has called on the NI Assembly to press ahead with a bill to make age discrimination illegal. New research for leading charity Age Concern suggests that more than 250,000 older people in Northern Ireland think ageism should be banned.
Read MoreCommunity mental health services are getting better, a survey from the health watchdog suggests. But access to counselling and support for carers is still poor, the Healthcare Commission warned. A survey of 16,000 patients highlighted a “worrying” lack of progress in helping people with mental illness access benefits or get work.
{mosimage}Mental health leaders admitted there were still problems with services but they were working to improve things. Overall, 76% felt the services they received were “good”, “very good” or “excellent”. Relationships between psychiatrists and their patients appear to be improving with steady year-on-year increases in the proportion of patients who believed they were listened to and respected.
And more people with complex mental health problems know who their care co-ordinator is and are being offered copies of their care plan. More people had a care review in the past 12 months than had been reported in the last annual survey. But in some areas there is still a lot of work to be done, the findings from 69 trusts suggested.
Half of patients still have no access to telephone-based out-of-hours crisis care. And more than one in three patients who wanted counselling say they did not get it. The figures also indicated a lack of progress in helping people with mental health problems access benefits with almost a third of those who wanted help not receiving it.
Anna Walker, Chief Executive of the Healthcare Commission, said: “The general trends are encouraging, particularly given that many trusts are still getting to grips with providing care to service users within their own communities. But this shouldn’t disguise the problems – problems that have been going on for too long.
Read MoreThe European Commission has been asked to investigate whether a local health authority can refuse to pay for drugs when funding is available elsewhere. Tory MEP Chris Heaton-Harris claims the so-called NHS post-code lottery breaks European anti-discrimination laws.
Read MoreThe government has admitted for the first time that almost half of all children will be dangerously overweight by 2050 if drastic action is not taken to halt the growth in childhood obesity.
Read More