What is the secret of delivering great residential and domiciliary care ? For Sussex Grange, which provides residential care to 20 elderly people and home care to 45 clients in Selsey and Chichester (West Sussex), person-centred care is the overriding value.
Sophie Hare, who is Sussex Grange’s Operations Director says, “Person centred care lies at the heart of everything we do. Our motto is to care with kindness, while our underlying philosophy is to provide a caring service that offers the reassurance, choices and opportunities that we would want for ourselves as we grow older.”
It is this compassionate and caring ethos that is deeply instilled in the culture of Sussex Grange that has earned it a rating of Good from the Care Quality Commission (CQC). But providing excellent care is by no means easy for Sophie and the 65 staff (45 in residential care), who are employed by Sussex Grange. A perfect storm of challenges – mostly notably funding, recruitment, retention and compliance – have made their jobs much harder.
Industry challenges
Sophie, who has worked in the care sector for nearly 25 years, says that while recruitment remains the greatest difficulty, the other key challenges are inextricably linked.
She explains, “Potentially, there is a vast pool of talent that social care could be tapping into. Social care faces long standing challenges and we await government reform to present an opportunity for better reward, recognition and support for the adult social care system. The people who work in social care are highly qualified, innovative, resourceful and resilient. They are extraordinary and make a difference in people’s lives.
“But, to truly flourish, it’s vitally important that social care has solid financial foundations to offer those who work in the sector the opportunity to progress and a rewarding career path. Offering all employees a clearly defined career route, which I am pleased to say that everyone who works at Sussex Grange has access to, will help to improve recruitment and retention, which are the perennial hurdles in our sector.”
Compliance
However, what about compliance? With protocol and regulation changing frequently, how does Sussex Grange ensure that its staff provide person-centred care, which conforms to CQC standards?
For years, Registered Managers and Directors updated policies and procedures manually. But doing so was time consuming and stressful as it often meant having to rewrite policies at short notice and then ensuring that staff were aware of the new way of working. That all changed, however, when Sussex Grange chose Quality Compliance Systems (QCS) as it compliance partner. QCS, the leading provider of content, guidance and standards for the social care sector, delivers Sussex Grange with a suite of customised up-to-date policies and procedures, which has strengthened its compliance and regulatory frameworks.
Says Sophie, “Perhaps the greatest compliment that I can pay QCS is that we no longer have to worry that we have missed a change in legislation as every time guidance changes, QCS sends us an alert.
She continues, “We have also been really impressed by the speed in which QCS updates guidance. During the peak of the COVID pandemic, for example, QCS provided us with an updated policy an hour or two after the government had changed its guidance. What’s more the policies and procedures that QCS creates are extremely easy for our staff to understand and can be accessed in a number of formats and many different devices the moment they go live on the QCS platform.
Sophie adds, “Most of all, with every policy created from a number of highly reputable sources in social care, it provides the foundations for us to build a suite of real-world policies and procedures, which not only chime with our unique set of values, but equip our staff to provide the best care possible to residents and clients.”
Creating an effective best practice content strategy for the front lines
But how does QCS help Sussex Grange to do this? For Sophie, who has worked at Sussex Grange for four years, the QCS platform goes beyond compliance, in that its content section provides extensive opportunities for best practice learning.
Sophie explains, “Take the Nutrition and Hydration policy and procedure for instance. QCS really brings it alive by providing us with fluid chart templates and care plan blueprints. The QCS resources section also includes a toolkit and a reading list. We’ll, therefore, ask staff to read the QCS policy and then we’ll have a monthly meeting where we’ll deconstruct the toolkit, anticipate any challenges, agree on the best ways to implement the policy in the home and, finally, learn collaboratively from any lessons from the past. So, in a nutshell, the QCS platform gives us a robust scaffold to really enhance best practice.”
Sophie also says that QCS has helped Sussex Grange to continually improve its care offering.
“We use QCS’s customer satisfaction surveys to good effect. QCS allows us to tailor them to all the different people who are connected the care service. So we can craft bespoke surveys for our professional team, residents, clients in the communities and family and friends. By acting swiftly on the comments we receive, we can make improvements if they are necessary, or in the majority of cases the surveys shed light on the excellent care provided by our staff. QCS helps us to achieve and maintain our high standards and that is why we will continue working with them in the future.”
To find out more about QCS, contact its compliance advisors on 0333-405-3333 or email: [email protected].