The social care economic balance sheet

The admin team here at Parkhaven Trust has been keeping a tally of the impact of the constrained financial times on our services. It feels very diffficult at the moment. All discussions with our purchasers seem to result in very depressing financial outcomes; for example no uplift on the fees that have been received. No acknowledgement for some very specific financial pressures in one particular service. These pressures are very real. A reassessment of a service user at our nursing home who has been residing at the home for years.

However on the positive side, the turnover of staff has reduced by 4%. This reduced turnover is encouraging. Lower turnover provides greater continuity of staff, retention of skills, knowledge and experience and less pressure on the advertising budget and those responsible for recruiting staff. We are also hopeful that as we go out for tender for our new dementia centre, pencils will be sharpened and we will receive some competitive prices

Thus all is not gloom. It is important in these tough times that we do hold onto what is important and that is providing the best possible services for those that choose to use us. Hopefully these constrained times will prompt our creative juices into action! A further positive outcome!

Hilary Rowland
22.07.10

Personalisation agenda


The personalisation agenda is much talked about in social care. It is rather a mouthful. In doing the annual review of our year it became very evident that what we now provide has changed markedly and is a manifestation of the personalisation agenda. So how does it manifest itself in the services we provide? Six years ago Parkhaven Trust had 12 registered homes and all that we offered was the opportunity of residential care. Now an innovative array of services has been developed in response to the different individual needs.

For example our dementia day service continues to grow. 116 people used the service last year some coming daily, some twice weekly, it varies according to need. People enjoy a range of activities including gardening, yoga, baking and singing and dancing. Building on this the Trust developed its domiciliary service, Parkhaven@home which in its first full year provided over 1600 hours of care. The philosophy of this service is that staff from the centre will support people in their own homes; familiar faces in familiar places. A special gardening service was then developed for people with dementia and this has grown (pardon the pun)! A weekend away for people with dementia proved so popular we have done more and more. These services are personalisation in action!

If there are special personal services that you would like, then do let us know at care@parkhaven.org.uk. We will do all we can to respond to your needs and interests.



Hilary Rowland

09.06.10

March blog

I write this blog looking out on the early spring flowers in our beautiful parkland setting. Spring is a time of renewal and reflects our own business cycle of renewal. We are currently working with our managers to plan for the year ahead. Like nature who uses the autumn leaves to feed new plants, we ask managers to reflect on what they have done, what they have achieved and use it to inform their plans for the coming 12 months. It is a time to reinvigorate, refocus and renew our efforts in providing excellent services.

This coming year will be particularly challenging as local authorities have offered no uplift on the fees that they pay us. Thus we will have to provide the same but improved services but in essence for less money. This is a challenge. But we will not be daunted we are passionate at the Trust about providing excellent, innovative and bespoke services because we are all different, have different interests and feel comfortable in different settings. Thus like the spring cycle of renewal, we are also renewing and reinvigorating our services for the year ahead.


Hilary Rowland
Chief executive
24.03.10

Disraeli comes to mind

I was at a meeting recently when Disraeli was quoted. Benjamin Disraeli was twice Prime Minister (1868, 1874- 80) and is oft quoted. The quote that was used seemed particularly apposite to our recent experiences during the cold weather. The thrust of what he said was that what we anticipate seldom occurs and what we least expect generally happens.

In our organisation, probably like many others, we have developed over the past 6 months robust contingency plans in the event of an outbreak of swine flu. We have met monthly sometimes weekly developed a range of plans for different situations and most recently arranged for the vaccination of all our service users and staff. We believed we were as prepared as we could be. However the recent cold snap and resulting snow and ice did catch us by surprise; hence Disraeli. We will ensure next time that we do not run out of salt and grit next time. It could have been that the planning we did to ensure our services would continue in the event of staff shortages during the flu outbreak would have been required but it was not the case because our staff made it in through the snow and ice, setting off early to ensure that the services were well covered. It is a real credit to them.


Hilary Rowland
28.1.10

Parkhaven’s Christmas blog


As the year end approaches it is often a time of reflection and review. Social care has been in the news a lot over the past 12 months whether as a consequence of discussions about new ways of funding such services or because of the burgeoning numbers and interest in dementia care. The Trust approaches the New Year with great hope and optimism tinged with some anxiety about the consequences of forthcoming stringent financial times.

I have three hopes for the coming year. Firstly that social care services will receive adequate funding which enables charities like Parkhaven to provide excellent services to all; not just those with the ability to pay. Secondly that we are able to recruit the right calibre of staff; this is crucial to the delivery of high quality services and is of course dependent at least in part on the first hope, adequate funds, in order that staff can be paid reasonable wages which value their important contribution. Finally I hope that as an organisation we continue to be bold, innovative and sensitive and responsive to what the individual who uses the service really wants and needs. This should result in an array of bespoke services being provided so that they truly are personal.

I look forward to reporting on these developments in the coming year.

Happy Christmas to you all.


Hilary Rowland
Chief executive
21.12.09

Sisyphean tasks

Sisyphus was a king of Corinth who was punished by Hades for his misdeeds. His punishment comprised of having to roll a heavy stone up a hill; every time he approached the top, the stone escaped his grasp and rolled to the bottom.

Our Trust is currently involved in two seemingly Sisyphean tasks: one seasonal, the sweeping of leaves, the other, the recruitment of staff seemingly unending.

The Trust has the immense gift of land, swathes of beautiful parkland which is a joy to walk through at this time of year because of the autumnal colours on our well established trees. However if you are one of our gardeners having to keep on top of sweeping up the leaves, it must seem a somewhat Sisyphean task.

But so too is keeping all our services appropriately staffed. Our Trust employs over 175 people. It is one of the biggest employers in the area. But finding the right people with empathy, who are good listeners, who realise it can be the little things that make a difference to how someone feels and then to retain them is a real challenge. Turnover of over 25% indicates the scale of this task. No sooner than we think are fully staffed and ‘cracked it’ do people move on either to better paid jobs, to progress their careers or because they do not feel able to undertake some of the very personal care that is an integral part of a caring role. And as the myth goes the stone almost gets to the top of the hill and then rolls down again. We have just engaged in a successful recruitment drive. We hope that this time that those we have employed will stay with the Trust, enjoy their work, develop their skills and feel they are really doing something really worthwhile, so there will be one less Sisyphean task!

Hilary Rowland
29.10.09

What is excellence?
Parkhaven Trust provides homes for over 100 people: different homes for different people and different needs. There are currently 6 homes which are part of Parkhaven Trust. They all meet different needs. There is a small home for people with significant additional needs, another home in the community for people with learning disabilities, a specialist residential home for people with dementia and a nursing home generally for older people. What they all have in common is that they have been assessed by the regulator of health and social care, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) http://www.cqc.org.uk/ as excellent. Our Kyffin Taylor home for people with dementia has joined the ranks of our excellent services.
Currently in order to be assessed as a 3 star excellent service by CQC, the expectation of the service is ‘not for perfect services but for particularly good services, well managed and with a sustained track record of high performance’ (CSCI, QPM Document no 167/07). Interestingly they must have resorted to the dictionary for this description because it describes excellence as the ‘quality of excelling, or being exceptionally good’ (Collins English dictionary).
It is my belief that excellence needs to be constantly worked at. There is absolutely no room for let up and there is always room to do things better. In the experience of the service user everything we do is important. The Trust is launching a new strategy, CHOICES, in which we identify excellence as a crucial plank of what we want to achieve over the coming 5 years. Service users will be the test of whether we are successful in that endeavour over the coming years. But we are not resting on our laurels , a new service is just being developed. Work started last week on our next new project, an extra care housing scheme for older people. We will track its progress through this blog.
Hilary Rowland
8.10.09