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What is the Care Act 2014: how does it affect Healthcare Providers like us?
Friday, September 11th, 2015 | Blog
The Care Act 2014 modernises and consolidates the law on adult care in England into one statute and has been described as the biggest change to the law in 60 years.
It aims to reform the law relating to care and support for adults and the law relating to support for carers by introducing new responsibilities for local authorities and adult care and support providers.
Key Aims:
- to make provision about safeguarding adults from abuse or neglect;
- to make provision about care standards;
- to establish and make provision about Health Education England;
- to establish and make provision about the Health Research Authority;
- to make provision about integrating care and support with health services; and for connected purposes.
Those of us requiring care or support want to be sure we are receiving the right care for our requirements. The new Care Act 2014 is focused on the diverse needs of people in society and strives to recognise that in fact, we all have very different care needs. For example, quality Homecare services may vary in terms of the requirements of patients who may have Dementia, spinal injury or Parkinson’s and the Care Act 2014 aims to ensure these situations are addressed in a manner as individual as the patient receiving them.
Meeting Needs -> Not one size fits all -> Person Centred Care
3 key changes that impact on the operations of the governing bodies as a result of the new care act:
- New Fundamental Standards Introduced by the Care Quality Commission (Replacing Essential Standards of Quality & Safety)
The standards came into force for all health and adult social care services from 1 April 2015. They form part of changes to the law recommended by Sir Robert Francis following his inquiry into care at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.
These new standards will ensure that key focus is on providers actually monitoring and striving to ensure that key aspects of services are safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led to meet all clients care needs successfully. The revised NMC Code, effective from the 31st March: These are the new professional standards of practice and behaviour for nurses and midwives: They set out the universal standards expected of nurses and midwives that they must uphold in order to be registered to practice in the UK. “The Code will strike a chord with the nurses and midwives who already demonstrate these principles in their practice. It will put patients and service users at the heart of practice, and will help us to protect the public better. Public expectations of care have changed since the Code was last reviewed in 2008. It is essential that the Code reflects patients’ and service users’ needs, modern healthcare practice and the recommendations of reviews such as the Francis Inquiry.” – Jackie Smith – Chief Executive and Registrar, NMCOne Code, four themes:
- Prioritise people
- Practice effectively
- Preserve safety
- Promote professionalism and trust.
Why is the Care Certificate being developed?
In the wake of the Francis Inquiry, it was necessary to review and make recommendations on: the recruitment, learning and development, management and support of healthcare assistants and social care support workers, ensuring that this workforce provides compassionate care.
This resulted in the development of a Certificate of Fundamental Care – the ‘Care Certificate’.
The Care Certificate builds on the Common Induction Standards (CIS) and sets out explicitly the learning outcomes, competences and standards of behaviour that must be expected in the sector, ensuring that the Care worker is caring, compassionate and understands the process and importance of providing quality care.
The Kare Plus team, through much research and planning throughout the last year, have been poised and ready for the changes to the care system for a while. Consequently, we are now offering a range of new training courses which will enable staff to ‘up skill’ in response to the care certificate.
For further information please call a member of the team on 0333 000 2022 or contact us online.
Our verdict on the New Care Act: Impactful, insightful and ultimately we see the changes will benefit all healthcare providers, including ourselves as a care agency, and their clients.
