Adult social care chief regulator Chris Badger gives TCHE editor Mary-Louise Clews an insight into thinking so far behind regulators dementia strategy, expected later this year.
The quality of training of staff to care for people with dementia is “really, really important” and the Care Quality Commission will want to be “really sharp” at how its inspected and regulated within its new dementia strategy, expected later this year, the adult care chief inspector has told The Care Home Environment.
Chris Badger’s comments come after the CQC published a dementia care best practice review last month which flagged the importance of staff training ‘to communicate well, including using body language and non-verbal cues’ to unintentionally undermining someone’ with the condition.
The review also said that staff are keen to undergo such training.
Speaking to TCHE following the call by Social Care independent Commission chair Dame Louise Casey’s call for urgent government action to improve dementia care, Mr Badger said the regulator is “particularly interested in the level and competency of the workforce and the skills that they have and [are] given and supported to develop, to support people with dementia.”
He added that the “literature is really clear that the quality of training for staff is really, really, really important, and that’s something we’re going to want to get out and be really sharp at, how we inspect and regulate against that.”
*xhead* Highly personalised care
Asked how the regulator’s new approach to regulating dementia care will measure success, Mr Badger said it would “drill down into particular lines of enquiry” to rate the quality of services for people with the condition, but added that it would be “really important to understand what unpaid carers, family and loved ones of people with dementia say about their care and support”.
“You can do this as a paper exercise, but ultimately, you need to speak to people about how it’s feeling for them and how it’s working for them and therefore track the extent to which that’s improving or not,” he said.
He added that he would ultimately feel the new approach had been successful if it drive more people with dementia to be “supported with really personalised, high quality care with carers that really understand what dementia means, how best to interact with people with dementia, and how best to help that individual live the life they have always wanted to lead” will be a “sign of success”.
Care home environments are “really important to me”
Mr Badger also explained that Care home environments are “really important” as the “intersection between the workforce within a care home and the residents.”
“We need buildings that allow people to support individuals [to] live the life they want to live in a personalised, safe way, and also facilitate staff working in really effectively – and not get in the way.”
