SCIE Infection Control e-Learning Course

CQC reports are one of the best ways to keep track of how safe care services are. But how is the CQC responding to the Covid-19 pandemic?  And where should you go to find information you can trust about UK care homes’ safety measures? Read this article to find out more about the current state of affairs. What Is the Care Quality Commission’s Role Right Now?  In June 2020, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) released an update. This update was to let the public know about how the CQC are changing their way of work during the Covid-19 pandemic. CQC inspections and ratings are vital to maintain the quality of care services in England. The Care Quality Commission’s role is to independently regulate health and adult social care providers. Their role remains the same pre and post-Covid. Rather, how they execute their role has had to change. Here are a few of the CQC guidelines at this time: Notifications Registered service providers must notify the CQC of certain events or incidents, such as allegations of abuse and service user death. Individual cases of coronavirus do not require CQC notification. Registration Health and social care providers can apply for Covid-19 registration. […]

Make sure your system stops the risk of airborne aerosol transmission  At the start of the Coronavirus pandemic, official guidelines from the World Health Organization (WHO) focused on addressing droplet transmission. It’s known that when people sneeze, cough, or talk they expel particles, which contain droplets and aerosols. Droplets are heavy and fall to the ground or surfaces within seconds and don’t travel far. As a result, experts advised care homes to focus on surface cleaning and hand washing to mitigate the spread of the virus. Now scientists have evidence that airborne aerosols can transmit the virus Aerosol particles are smaller, lighter and can linger in the air for hours and drift further, particularly indoors, causing potential transmission of the coronavirus. In a recent video the WHO recommends good room ventilation, or, where that is not possible, air purification devices that use HEPA filters. A paper by EMG under the UK Government on the role of ventilation presented to SAGE (Scientific Group for Emergencies) highlighted that ventilation should be integral to the COVID-19 mitigation strategy in multi-occupant spaces. The Guardian, The Times and The Daily Telegraph have all written extensive articles on the risk of COVID-19 airborne transmission. They report growing […]

S.A.F.E. is designed to help consumers make informed decisions about the most suitable location for their loved ones. It is built on a principle that there should be a way to enable anyone to know about a care provider’s services, to ensure the services are suitable and appropriate for the individual’s needs. Going back to the previous century, there was far less openness about what happened behind the closed doors of a care home. Even in a hospital, the matron would sometimes rule the roost with a rod of iron, and everyone accepted this situation. This willingness to accept what we are given, largely, no longer exists in this country; we have had the opportunity to make choices and we like to believe we are making informed choices based on our own needs. However, to make informed choices requires information, and this information needs to be in a consumable format and available where people need to see it. The challenge is, how to make information available without making the process of collecting and collating the information onerous. Reusing available information Care providers have no shortage of demands on their time, asking them to manually maintain another data source, purely for […]

Still a relatively new idea here in the UK, home visits have huge potential to boost a retirement living operator’s sales strategy. Home visits and other person-centred activities can help you address resistance and turn what feels like a rejection into an opportunity for change. The relationship isn’t over when you hear the commonly uttered phrase, ‘I’m not ready yet.’ There’s more to be learned, especially in terms of the very real emotions and objections surrounding the sale. The value of home visits We know that home visits can be time-consuming and expensive – there’s travel and you probably won’t want to show up empty-handed. They can also be highly intensive and a lot of responsibility for a salesperson, especially with COVID safety considerations. And at the end of the day, it can be awkward to ask to visit someone in their home. What if they say no? It’s encouraging to remember what we are trying to achieve, both for ourselves and the prospective resident who needs help. Rather than persuade, we are trying to facilitate understanding and help a prospect make a decision themselves. Our role as a sales advisor is to guide them through all aspects of the […]

3 Activities to Increase Occupancy in Retirement Living Sales-enablement platform Sherpa studied customer data from more than 100,000 senior living units across the United States to uncover the behaviours of top performing sales teams during 2021. Sherpa identified “Best Sales Performer” sales teams that achieved higher move-in ratios than the average. Three key activities where Best Sales Performers prioritise their selling time are: Home visits Creative follow-up Planning sessions These sales behaviours are an integral part of Sherpa’s “Prospect-Centred Selling” methodology. Best Sales Performers engaged consistently in these three activities and allocated more selling time in these areas than did the median performers. As a result, they had up to 2.4 times the number of sales across care types, including independent and assisted living. Here is a look at how top senior housing sales teams can sell more effectively. Home visits Some of the most valuable data to a team looking to increase occupancy is tracking how sales advisors spend their selling time. According to Sherpa’s 2021 Best Sales Performers Report, many sales teams underestimate the time and effort they’ll need to reach their occupancy goals. They also tend to overspend on marketing in order to generate more ‘fresh’ enquiries. […]