Fantastic headline. Too unusual (and too good) a story to look too hard for morals but there something here about the desire for independence, isn’t there? #socialcare www.bbc.com/news/article...

Defiant nuns flee Austrian care home for their abandoned convent in the Alps - BBC News

Sisters Bernadette, Regina and Rita needed a locksmith to get back into their convent, defying Church leaders.

bbc.com

Fair Pay In Social Care Is A Fine And Progressive Policy – But Who Is Going To Pay For It? | The King's Fund www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-...

Fair Pay In Social Care Is A Fine And Progressive Policy – But Who Is Going To Pay For It? | The King's Fund

There are lots of unknowns about the government’s proposed fair pay agreement in social care, says Simon Bottery, but the biggest is who will have to swallow the cost.

kingsfund.org.uk

Interesting to see in print the government's three 'core objectives' for adult #socialcare. They are sensible and coherent, even if they do skip over the key issue of eligibility. A surprise, though, to see them at all after a year when social care strategy was largely avoided.

Central government has focused too much on monitoring relatively small grants and too little on working out what impact our overall spend on adult #socialcare has on the lives of people. That’s one key finding of MPs in a new report today. committees.parliament.uk/publications...

Despite the dramatic headline, it seems that Casey has simply decided to meet the parties separately at first and bring them together later. It should be quite hard to work up to a ‘fury’ about that. #socialcare www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/202...

Fury as Labour drops cross-party talks to fix social care crisis

Gathering with health representatives from opposition political parties called off at last minute branded a ‘missing opportunity’

telegraph.co.uk

If you want to know how today's spending review affects #socialcare, you are going to have to wait. There is no clear sum to fund a fair pay agreement and promises of 'over £4bn' for social care in 2028/29 are unclear. Puzzled, frustrated thread > news.sky.com/story/spendi...

NEW COUNTRY PROFILE: #England 🌍 In this system profile, @blimeysimon.bsky.social (@thekingsfund.bsky.social) and @natashacurry.bsky.social (@nuffieldtrust.org.uk) unpack the country's long-term care system. 🔍 Read now: goltc.org/system-profi...

This is the sort of news story care homes need. While it is of course nice to read about exotic animal visits (and there are lots of those stories in local newspapers), this is the one that makes people reassess their image of residential care. #socialcare www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-e...

'We moved into the same nursing home and found the friendship of a lifetime'

Peter and Kathleen met at Archers Court Nursing Care Home in Sunderland and are now inseparable

chroniclelive.co.uk

Fed up with headlines claiming #socialcare is responsible for specific - and usually high - numbers of delayed discharge? After crunching the data we can say that… we just don’t know the true figure, because we stopped asking. Time to start again, though. www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-...

Delayed Discharges: Why It’s Hard To Say How Many Are Due To Social Care Capacity | The King's Fund

We don’t know how many delayed discharges are due to lack of social care capacity, say Simon Bottery and Sarah Arnold, and that’s because we stopped counting.

kingsfund.org.uk

In your lifetime, you are more likely than not to develop #dementia or care for someone with it, a new @CareQualityComm report reminds us. That’s a strong, self-interest argument for a fairer, better funded #socialcare system, isn’t it? www.cqc.org.uk/publications...

Interesting @thefabians report which - for me - begs questions about the extent to which pay should be the immediate #socialcare priority. Crudely, should you ‘blow the budget’ on it or accept more limited change and investment in other areas? Thread🔽 fabians.org.uk/publication/...

“For a moment I understand why, despite everything, so many here seem to love their job.” Sympathetic portrait of working in #socialcare www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcar...

What’s it like to work in a care home? I joined a shift to find out

Ministers want Britons to fill more of the sector’s 130,000 vacancies. Could you wipe, feed, smile and log every moment for £12.84 an hour?

thetimes.com

Valuable new @HealthFdn report on the potential cost of improved #socialcare. It considers three ‘levels’ of improvement and finds cost rises of between £3.4bn and £8.7bn in 2028/29 (all figures are real terms). Quick summary and some thoughts below 🔽 www.health.org.uk/reports-and-...

Adult social care funding pressures: 2023–35

We project the costs of meeting growing demand for adult social care in England and making some improvements to care up to 2034/35.

health.org.uk

Care providers may struggle to win over the public on new immigration rules, suggests this large @YouGov poll. Nearly half (47%) support the govt reducing the no. of people migrating to work in #socialcare while a third (33%) oppose it. Big differences by politics/age though… 🔽

The issue here is not so much the principle as the timing. It’s right we should end reliance on overseas #socialcare workers and improving pay, which the govt plans to do, should help achieve that. But that potential pay increase is a long way off… www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Labour axing care worker visa will put services at risk, say unions and care leaders

White paper proposes banning new recruitment from abroad despite care sector relying heavily on foreign workers

theguardian.com

The new @CommonsHealth report is a robust critique of the ‘do nothing/delay’ approach to #socialcare reform. It finds too little data to answer its own exam question - what is the cost of doing nothing - but points to some ways forward. V short thread 🔽 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Doing nothing on social care is untenable, MPs warn

The report says failure to fix England's social care system carries an unknown human and financial cost.

bbc.co.uk

The terms of reference for the Casey #socialcare commission are published today (though staff have been working for a while). There are concerns, particularly timing, but they should offer the scope Baroness Casey needs to do a thorough job. Thread below ⬇️ www.gov.uk/government/p...

Independent commission into adult social care: terms of reference

gov.uk

Despite being 40% of a typical council's spending, adult #socialcare often seems missing in local election debate. So credit to @Kent_Online for asking each party what they'd do about it locally - the results are fascinating (summary in the thread below). www.kentonline.co.uk/kent/news/pa...

HAPPENING TOMORROW! 📣 Join @adelinacohe.bsky.social, @blimeysimon.bsky.social, Janine Dizon, Nicky Baker, and Sarah Gilbert for this exciting session on care #Workforce retention. 💼 REGISTER NOW to join at 9am BST: lse.zoom.us/meeting/regi... #CareWorkforce #WorkforceRetention #Webinar

Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: GOLTC webinar: Care Workforce Retention – what factors are critical and how they change with worker age. . After registering, you will receive a confirmatio...

Recruitment is a critical issue for most care sectors internationally, but stemming the loss of highly experienced workers through successful retention strategies must equally be a priority. The prese...

lse.zoom.us

Terms like ‘my love’ serve a valuable purpose in communication, says this new research in care homes. #socialcare theconversation.com/dementia-car...

Dementia care: are terms of endearment like ‘sweetheart’ comforting or condescending?

‘Elderspeak’ can serve important functions in conversations between healthcare professionals and patients with dementia.

theconversation.com

Interesting from @HSJnews (£): hospitals 'increasingly using' fast track CHC to speed up discharges while awaiting #socialcare packages. Yet fast track is typically for end of life care and so may well be the wrong option for many people. www.hsj.co.uk/integrated-c...

‘Unaffordable’ care spending driven by rush to clear hospital beds

The rush from acute hospitals to "free up beds" is probably behind an "unaffordable" rise in an integrated care board's social care spending, it has been told.

hsj.co.uk

"Failing to recognize that a person may consider some states of impairment worse than death is not resident centered or evidence-based". This is thought-provoking research for care homes. #socialcare jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Cognitive and Functional Decline Among Long-Term Care Residents

This cohort study investigates the incidence of severe cognitive and functional impairment and survival after impairment among long-term care residents in Canada.

jamanetwork.com

"If you do work in the care system - please know you are massively appreciated and the role you play in the lives of families is huge." #socialcare www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrit...

Radio 2's Jo Whiley shares new health update on sister after move to care home

BBC Radio 2 star Jo Whiley discussed the family's tough decision to place her sister Frances into a Mencap-run home, as well as her worries about Frances' wellbeing

mirror.co.uk

There are some positives in the new @DHSCgovuk survey on the #socialcare workforce, conducted in autumn 2024. While 71% of providers found recruitment a challenge, most thought it hadn’t deteriorated and 1 in 5 thought it had improved, as had retention and morale.

Went to the Freud Museum yesterday and discovered that the post box outside the house has been covered with visitor stickers, presumably through the process of transference.

This raises the familiar question of whether we need more care coordinators to help people navigate a complex health and #socialcare system. Alternatively, maybe we need a simpler health and #socialcare system. (Probably we need both.) www.hssib.org.uk/patient-safe...

The over-enthusiasm of this headline (the story is about nothing more dramatic than a new qualification for care workers) came on the same day as a report by @TunstallHealth said preventative technology is hamstrung by failure to integrate health and #socialcare budgets. 1/4

A pity there’s nothing about #socialcare in this interesting piece about ‘door-to-door’ NHS services. Crucially, how can a free, universal service work effectively when home care is means-tested and rationed? Now, if you had Scotland’s free personal care system… www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/6ab8f2a...

NHS sent door-to-door to tackle sickness crisis

Radical scheme tipped to transform healthcare with house calls likened to return of the family doctor

telegraph.co.uk

Macro-level news might be terrible but there’s the occasional heartening story lower down the page www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Excel Parking ordered to pay £10,240 in five-minute parking rule row

Excel Parking had demanded £11,390 from driver Hannah Robinson, but lost a court case against her.

bbc.co.uk

Another webinar to get excited about! 🎉 Care #WorkforceRetention: what factors are critical + how they change w/ age? 💼 Join us on Wed 30 April w/ @blimeysimon.bsky.social (@thekingsfund.bsky.social), Janine Dizon, Nicky Baker (ARIIA) + Sarah Gilbert (Skills4Care):👉 lse.zoom.us/meeting/regi...