Fostering in Scotland unfair?

Sarah Lurie, director of Fostering Network Scotland writes in the Guardian, crticising the current lack of regulation by the Scottish Government in fostering, which has left local authorities and independent fostering providers to set their own fostering allowance rates, and foster carers potenitally being asked to care for higher numbers of children than in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, where the limit for unrelated placements is 3 at one time. This year the Scottish Government conducted a consulation exercise for the proposed Children and Young People's Bill. The new bill will hopefully bring Scotland into line with the rest of the UK in the above areas. Additionally Lurie is hopeful that proposals for payment for foster carers in line with the remuneration of staff in residential children's care will increase recruitment and retention of foster carers.

Into the Unknown - Children's Journeys Through the Asylum Process

This week the Children's Society published a report Into the Unknown, on the experiences of unaccompanied children seeking asylum on arrival in the UK. THe report is critical of the UK Border agency, with the Children's Society maintaining that the UKBA fails to ensure that children fully understand the process they are entered into and that children who may already be traumatised, having fled from violence, have to contend with a culture of disbelief. Many children reported that when being interviewed by the UKBA, there was no responsible adult to act on tehir behalf, and that interpreters often lacked the specific regional dialect or language to do the job properly. The Children's Society concludes that better training is essential for interpreters involved in this work and that an independent feedback and complaints system needs to be established to keep children fully informed of the process of their claim.

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.

Protecting Disabled Children

OfSted (England and Wales) have issued a report Protecting disabled children: thematic inspection. The report examines how well local authorities and Local Safeguarding Children Boards work in evaluating the work done by the multiple professionals and agencies involved in provision of services to disabled children. Most children and their parents/carers were offered multi-agency support at an early stage, which was keenly received. However in the work with children in need, plans were often found to lack detail of focus on outcomes and reviews often failed to include all the professionals working with children and in some cases the planning or review process was absent. The report concludes that these gaps may cause delay in  identifying child protection issues with disabled children. Additionally, not all staff from the different agencies working with disabled children were adequately trained in their safeguarding responsibilities.

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.

Social Work/Social Care & Media

I have just stumbled across the Social Work/Social Care & Media Blog - and it looks really interesting. Participants SWCS Media bills itself as "a knowledge community of practice that brings Social Work and Social Care practitioners, organisations, academics, researchers, students, policy makers, users of service and other allied professionals, stakeholders or enthusiasts and interested parties together, to discuss issues, innovations, opportunities, dilemmas and challenges as well as relevant developments in relation to Social Work and/or Social Care.". They regularly conduct live twitter debates on issues and case studies in social work and social care, (@SWSCmedia  #SWSCmedia) and collect together the posts in each debate on the blog. Well worth reading.