Pocket Guides from BASW

BASW have produces 5 downloadable pocket guides with basic information, hints and tips for practicing professionals and students of social work. The guides are:

• Alcohol and other drugs
• Children families and alcohol use
• Mental health and substance use
• Alcohol and older people
• Young people and alcohol

PDFs for all five can be downloaded from the link above.

Alcohol and Older People

BASW have published a guide on Alcohol and Older People which attempts to explain some of the reasons why  older people may use alcohol and drink more than the recommended limits. Old age may bring social isolation and fears of ageing, or alcohol may be used as self-medication to cope with age related illness. Often older people may become involved in “drinking networks” simply to have some company. Older people may be more likely to be misdiagnosed by health services as alcohol related symptoms may present in conjunction with other age related conditions.
On the same subject, a BBC Panorama broadcast Old Drunk and Disorderly, examines why those over 65 are more likely to drink every day, and drink alone, than anyother age group, leading to more alcohol related hospital admissions for older people than for the often assumed to be heavy drinking 16-24 year old age group.

Hogewey - the happy home for residents with dementia

Hogewey, 30 minutes from Amsterdam, is a village residence for those with dementia. Services have been designed to provide a home like environment, as an alternative to the previous institutional incarnation of the service, with large buildings, locked wards uniformed nurses and heavy medication. Residents now live in small group houses, with two carers on duty in a house for 6 or 7 residents. The varied home like environments help to ease the confusion and anger residents with dementia can experience, with the different houses being tailored to echo the earlier lifestyles or residents. Read more in the Guardian 27 August.

Joined Up Thinking

I'm sure we all suspected it already, but a report this week from the Kings Fund Explaining variation in use of emergency hospital beds by patients over 65 gives us an explicit statement that areas where there are well developed integrated care services for older people have lower emergency hospital bed occupancy, and in areas where there are larger than average proportions of older people in the community, hospital bed occupancy by this demographic is lower. This is possibly because the development of integrated services is more advanced in these locales, having developed in response to the needs of the population. The corollary of this is that in areas of high bed occupancy tended to have overly long lengths of stay related to older people transitioning from hospital back to supported home or social care living. The wide spread introduction of more joined up services would reduce hospital costs considerably and one would hope improve the lives of service users.
In Swindon services for a different demographic group have also shown that inter-professional working can improve the efficacy of health and social services. A formal partnership between NHS Swindon and Swindon Borough Council to work with Participle, reduced the number of different contacts with outside agencies with families who participate, with integrated teams. The results have seen  increases in adults returning to work or training, children returning to school and  reduction in numbers of children on child protection plans, as participating families were supported in making changes. See Guardian 10 August for more information.

Designing and delivering older care in Glasgow

A new report from IRISS, the Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Sciences, has been published on an innovative project: Shaping the choreography of care & support for older people in Glasgow. This partnership project, working with diverse agencies from social work, to health, to Glasgow School of Art, collaborated on future support for older people's well being and service delivery.

Care Knowledge highlights - new Scottish content this week

Care knowledge is useful in highlighting new e-documents and acting as a gateway to reports across a variety of sources.
From the Scottish executive:
The Capacity of disability organisations to engage with public authorities.
A resource guide to engagement standards, guidance and tool kits.
Mapping Scotland's disability organisations.
Older people living in the community - nutritional needs, barriers and interventions: a literature review.
Other highlights from Careknowledge this week:
Targeted violence and hostility against people with mental health conditions.
Healthier children safer communities.
Young black people and the criminal justice system.