This is the third installment of the BBC series on dementia care in the UK in which business man Sir Gerry Robinson attempts to find out what is wrong with and fix dementia care in the UK. Let me know what you think. Can you recognise anything familiar in this installment?
Is there a single facility in Australia that does not purport to be delivering Person-Centred Care? I think that the brilliant thing this programme did for me was show that there did exist excellent care facilities that did not depend on higher income. Passionate and committed management, on the floor, modelling genuine care based on human connection and dignity. Certainly we can always blame someone up the chain for our lack of income, but who can we blame for our own hearts hardening? Thank you so so much for showing this, thank you Gerry Robinson, you deserve a second knighthood.
Congratulations Cheryl You have nailed it. Aged care is not taken seriously by any government, and so he most vulnerable are constantly at risk, from under trained staff, and under resourced facilities, and no matter how hard we as individuals try, we cannot achieve the consistency, and the quality of care that we would like to be able to give. This is partly because we are constantly chasing our tails trying to prove to the government, who only care about the bottom line, that we are doing a half decent job. The requirements for documentation alone is enormous. When you couple this with many care staff who are untrained, whose native tongue is not English, (which creates communication problems)and who are so poorly paid for such a physically and mentally exhausting job, it is a wonder that we still do even a half decent job. WE really are just moving the deck chairs on the Titanic, and I don’t want to be there when it goes down!
Thank you Bernie. I am sure we can all identify with the carers and the elderly in these situations.Much of the problem is that society does not value the elderly as they should and therefore it translates into how our governments fund aged care, how they regulate aged care and the burden of that regulation keeps on growing as we all try to meet compliance but often forget about quality of life issues.Would like to see more.
How refreshing to see a humanising approach emerging to caring for our parents and grandparents. There are also younger people living in some of these places and I very recently visited (on invitation) the sister of a friend of mine who is one such person living in a nursing home here in Australia. It brought me to tears it was so appalling. A lawyer had become involved to help the residents find their voices.
I think appropriate staff support is a fundamental issue for these Care places … to help staff ‘grow’ themselves into the best person they can possibly be could only benefit everyone. The staff are unsung heroes … often doing things for residents in their own time, without any capacity to celebrate their love for their residents.
Despite finding these videos really distressing, I am very grateful that you, Bernie, have shared them with us.
That could be me there one day! No wonder euthanasia is in an increasing number of peoples’ hearts and conversations.
Thanks Bernie.
I know this is not the situation (quite) in Australia – certainly our standards and training appear higher than is shown in the clips so far, but I believe it is a timely reminder to us to review our practices – in the words of Dr Bill Thomas – what management does to the staff the staff do unto the elders.
At DutchCare we work the person-centred approach – well we like elder directed care which is another mile along the path to creating meaningful lives for elders, we don’t always get it right but by working with the elders, staff and families we do get a much better picture of the person we are caring for, and by empowering staff to be able to make decisions with the elders we are creating lives worth living not only for the elders but also for the staff.
I also dont think this is an issue just for the private sector – I know lots of great operators across all sectors in Australia, but I do believe it comes from the senior most managers down.
Bernie, thanks for bringing these programs to us.