Captain Sir Tom Moore has collaborated with Age UK and Cadbury’s ‘Donate Your Words’ campaign to encourage everyone in the UK to start a meaningful conversation with an older person to help tackle loneliness.
Captain Moore who first came into the spotlight when he raised over £32 million for the NHS by walking laps of his garden during lockdown earlier this year is launching a new podcast to tackle isolation among older people.
The podcast, called The Originals, is part of a campaign by charity Age UK and Cadbury which aims to inspire people up and down the country to have a meaningful conversation with an older person, with social isolation especially among the elderly worsening during the COVID-19 crisis.
Captain Moore said: “I hope The Originals podcast will help encourage everyone to start a proper conversation with an older person. We truly are the originals and we have more in common than you may think, we have hundreds of amazing tales just waiting to be told.”
For more information visit the homecare.co.uk website
The chief executive of United Kingdom Homecare Association (UKHCA) has criticised the government over the lack of testing and costs of PPE, accusing them of being ‘disinterested in the 715,000’ care workers during the pandemic.
In her open letter to Stuart Miller, director of Adult Social Care Delivery at the Department for Health and Social Care, Dr Jane Townson expresses her concerns with the lack of information to home care providers and how she is ‘frustrated by the focus of politicians on care homes,’ saying the only message for home care providers was to ‘follow government guidance on PPE’.
Her letter is in response to the missive from the Department for Health and Social Care warning care providers that the UK is experiencing a rise in confirmed COVID-19 cases.
She states: ‘If the government is serious about minimising the spread of COVID19 among the care workforce and those they support in communities, it needs to fully fund the cost of PPE for care workers and ensure there is availability and accessibility of antigen testing as required for the home care workforce as well as for those in care homes.’
Dr Townson has asked the government for an explanation into lack of testing after reports by officials to meetings UKHCA had attended made it clear ‘inadequate laboratory capacity for testing’ is the reason for a lower prioritisation of testing in homecare.
The government said UK laboratory daily testing capacity was more than 370,000 last week
She added routine testing is not available for home care workers in areas where there are lockdowns and it was ‘unacceptable’ some areas are ‘experiencing a fast and efficient service’ for testing while others are being directed hundreds of miles away and having to ‘wait days for results’.
For the full story visit the homecare.co.uk website.
Care home residents and staff as well as home care workers and the people they care for, are to get free PPE until March 2021, according to the government.
Free PPE is part of the new Adult Social Care Winter Plan which has been drawn up to support care homes and home care services through the winter months.
Care homes and home care care services will also be able to access a £546m Infection Control Fund so they can pay care workers full sick pay if they have to self-isolate. Care homes are also being encouraged to use the money to increase their workforce to limit staff moving between different care homes.
In addition the government is also appointing a new chief nurse for adult social care to provide clinical leadership to the social care nursing workforce and setting up a dashboard for local, regional and national government to monitor care home infections.
For more information on this story visit homecare.co.uk
