Lister’s carers support team looking for volunteers

The Lister Hospital’s carers support team is looking for volunteers to take part in a new project that aims to provide extra support to those caring for family members. Volunteers will work in two-hour shifts, visiting wards and outpatient clinics, speaking to patients, and identifying those who are carers. The volunteers will be able to refer those who need extra support on to suitable organisations who can offer further advice and guidance.

Training will be provided for new starters.

Volunteers do so much important work in our local communities, and if there is anyone in North East Hertfordshire who would like to give their time to this good cause, I recommend that they call 01438 284760 or email volunteer.enh-tr@nhs.net for an application pack.

East and North Hertfordshire CCG becomes NHS ‘vanguard’ site

It is exciting to see that East and North Hertfordshire CCG has become one of the first NHS vanguard’ sites in the UK.

Earlier this year, the NHS invited individual organisations and partnerships to apply to become ‘vanguard’ sites to help develop new care models, representing one of the first steps towards delivering the Five Year Forward View and supporting improvement and integration of services.

The Hertfordshire Vanguard is made up of Hertfordshire County Council, East and North Hertfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group and Hertfordshire Care Providers Association, and aims to find new ways of improving the service offered to the area’s 3,000 care home residents.

The ‘vanguard’ status means that the group involved is able to draw on expert help and a share of a national £200m fund. The project aims to support frail elderly patients and those with multiple, complex, and long-term conditions in the community in a planned, proactive, and preventative way. The vanguard will also focus on enhancing the skills and confidence of care home staff through a package of education and training.

The programme will create dedicated multi-disciplinary teams for care homes which will include GPs, community psychiatric nurses, district nurses, and geriatricians. They will work with homes to support residents pro-actively, as well as if a resident’s condition deteriorates. They will develop a rapid response service so that care homes have access to services in two localities with a combination of community nurses, matrons, therapists, and home carers who can be deployed within 90 minutes if required.

This means that care home patients will be supported in the home by staff that are accredited, because they have undertaken a package of education and training. In addition, patients will know that should their condition deteriorate, a team of experts is ready to respond to their needs before making an assessment as to whether they need to go to hospital.

A number of improvements are already under way:

• Care home staff and managers in eleven homes are undertaking intensive specialist training in a range of skills, from wound management to dementia care,
• Two community pharmacists have been employed to give advice on medicines management to care home staff (care home patients take, on average, eight prescribed medicines a day, and medication errors frequently lead to hospital admissions),
• A further ten care homes have signed up to take part in the next phase of the scheme.

This is an important project, and we all hope that it will make great strides in improving care home services, both in Hertfordshire and nationally. I wish all involved good luck in their task, and will be keeping a close eye on developments.

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