On Friday last week I was pleased to present our Hospital to Home project at Scottish Care’s Care at Home and Housing Support Conference.
The conference, entitled ‘My Home, My Rights, My Care’, focused on how we can deliver person-centred care through partnership working in an ever changing sector and work force.
The event was attended by over 200 delegates. There were only a handful of speakers (detailed below), meaning that delegates could take time to move round the stands on display from a range of organisations – including IRISS where we were able to share resources from our Fit for the Future project – network and ask questions. I much prefer events like this rather than ones that shoehorn too much into their programmes with no time for reflection!
The event had a strong focus on personalisation and working with people. I was pleased to hear ‘listening‘; ‘partnership‘; ‘working together‘ and ‘person-centred‘ repeated as common themes throughout the day.
Jamie Hepburn, MSP for Cumbernauld & Kilsyth, set the tone for the event when he said
“better outcomes for older people relies on listening and partnership working with older people and their careers”
Followed by Ranald Muir, Scottish Care, stating
“Personalised care will require people having the right to control their care package”
It was also really refreshing that Scottish Care had invited Agnes Houston, a woman with early onset dementia, to present her personal story including details of where her care had failed her. This was an inspiring presentation and so valuable to have insight from people with lived experience. Well done Agnes and Scottish Care!
Most inspiring of all was the fact that the word ‘love‘ came up so many times in the presentations throughout the day and the importance of care providers showing love. This relates to other work we are involved in and it is encouraging that the importance of love, compassion and care is spreading across the sector at various events.
In the afternoon I was joined by three other presenters to talk about our work under the theme of “Getting it Right for the Whole Person: Partnership and Personalisation in Practice”.
I was inspired to hear about a project in Dundee – Meal Makers – “a free, local neighbourhood, food-sharing project that connects people who like to cook and are happy to share an extra portion of a delicious home cooked meal, with older neighbours living close by who could really benefit from a hot cooked meal.” The highlight of this presentation for me was listening to the personal stories of the people involved in this project and how it has supported them. I hope to hear more about this project spreading in Tayside in coming months!
I also really enjoyed the presentation from Tracy Steel at Care watch about the “Social Media Revolution” and the importance of us understanding how this will change our care delivery in the future.
Tracy encouraged the care providers in the audience to spread the word about the care and support they offer by tweeting about the ‘little things’ they do for the people within their care so that people can hear about these and help spread the word for the care sector. After all, it’s the little things that add up to big things that make a difference for the people they care for and their families and carers!
The day ended with a panel discussion about ‘the right to fair pay and conditions’. This focused on zero hour contracts and whether they were acceptable or not. The general consensus being that they should only be used if chosen by the worker and not fostered by the local authority.
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Over all I found this event extremely valuable and enjoyable. It is encouraging to see such importance and value being placed on lived experience and personal stories and I hope to see this as a continuous theme within future events I attend.
Thanks, Fiona