Access childcare support through the childcare service

To qualify for either scheme, parents must be working and each earning at least £120 a week (on average) and not more than £100,000 each a year.

Parents can use Tax-Free Childcare alongside the 15 and 30 hours free childcare schemes in England, or any free childcare hours provided by the Scottish, Welsh or Northern Ireland governments.

Parents can’t use Tax-Free Childcare at the same time as they receive childcare vouchers, Universal Credit or tax credits. However, 30 hours free childcare can be received alongside these schemes.

When you apply, you’ll be considered for both these services through the same application. You’ll only be asked to decide which support you want if you’re on tax credits or using a childcare voucher or salary sacrifice scheme. You should check what help you could get with childcare costs, using the childcare calculator. This will help you decide which support is best for you.

To find out more and apply click here

Children’s mental health: it’s time to put wellbeing on the curriculum

It’s no secret that low-level disruption, burnout, anxiety, absence and mental health problems affecting staff and pupils alike are on the rise.

A 2016 Education Support Partnership (ESP) survey suggested 84% of teachers have suffered from mental health problems at some point over the last two years. A 2017 report by the Children’s Commissioner for England also found that 580,000 young people – equivalent to the population of the city of Manchester – are receiving some form of social care or assistance with mental health problems.

Statistics show that one in 10 children – an average of three in every classroom – has a diagnosable mental health problem, and that 75% of mental health problems in adults have their roots in childhood. At the chalkface, teachers will be teaching children who have anxiety, depression and phobias, and a scary number of children now self-harm. Worse still, these disorders now manifest at earlier ages.

Brilliant schools

How can we stop young people from suffering mental health problems in the first place? I believe the answer is simple: equip them with the knowledge and skills to be in charge of their own wellbeing.

That’s why a small band of heads and classroom teachers and I are currently trialling a “Happiness Ofsted” approach. We deliver training to children in years five to 13 and introduce them to a range of positive psychology topics such as wellbeing, resilience, personal responsibility, growth mindsets, kindness, mindfulness and gratitude.

The lessons are adapted from a successful business model that my team and I have delivered around the world. The principles of wellbeing are universal. Everyone wants to feel amazing and function at their optimal level but the current system fails to tell you how. Our happiness workshops are designed to be interactive and great fun, as well as being grounded in the very latest thinking, all the while lining young people up to be their best self.

Students are challenged to design their own Brilliant Schools programme focused on how they can improve their own happiness and learning, how they can improve the wellbeing of their school, and how they can improve the wellbeing of their community.

The children share their ideas and devise their own 10-point plan so each school does their own thing. But most important, the children get excited about taking the messages across their school and community and we leave them to it. Young people have risen to the challenge, often reporting the project to have boosted their confidence, happiness and outlook on life. Things like: “It taught me how positivity can spread” and “I feel proud of myself for doing this, and for joining a club that will help my confidence and positivity.”

We’ve had children setting new world records for random acts of kindness. We’ve seen them washing teacher’s cars at lunchtime, holding school assemblies on kindness, visiting local care homes for older people, designing and delivering their own wellbeing curriculum. The list is endless.

Happiness inspector

A teacher is appointed to help them deliver their 10-point plan, and after a few months we revisit the school as the “happiness inspector” and check on the children’s progress.

The children present “evidence” against their plan – a presentation and a tour of the school showing the things they have done. If they’ve achieved what they wanted, the school is awarded a banner to hang on the school gates, saying: “We are an outstandingly happy school”. It’s a very powerful message.

The best part is that the children have designed and delivered their own programme, so it’s sustainable because the culture has changed from the inside-out. Teachers love the way the project changes behaviours and it has even resulted in improved SATs results. It impacts positively on learning but also leaks into the wider community. One said: “In 20 years of teaching, this has given the biggest impact on children.”

GCSE in wellbeing

We decided not to stop there and are currently writing a syllabus that will raise the educational wellbeing bar. Our next step is to produce a syllabus for a GCSE in wellbeing, in which teenagers will be taught half a dozen modules and build a portfolio of personal growth.

The GCSE will have a strong academic underpinning and modules will include positive psychology (the science of happiness), resilience and relationships. It will also place an emphasis on learning a variety of techniques including mindfulness.

The golden thread throughout all the modules will be young people aspiring to be their best selves and learning strategies and life skills to maintain their own mental wellbeing.

Our hope is that, one day, GCSE wellbeing will sit alongside maths, science and English as a core subject, and that it will impact positively on school grades across the board. My research has shown that happiness is good for business (happy employees work harder, are more creative and have less time off sick) so common sense tells us the same principles will also apply to children.

Meeting the multi-headed monster of mental health problems with resilience, positivity, happiness, altruism and emotional intelligence is a tough fight. But it’s winnable.

Employers start to ease the pressure on working carers

When her father developed Parkinson’s disease dementia, Mary Bright did her best to help with his care. As his illness progressed, her weekends settled into a joyless routine: a dash from work on Friday to collect her two children from their after-school club in Bristol in the south-west of England, feed them supper and get them into their pyjamas for the four-hour journey eastward, in heavy traffic, to their grandparents’ home in Essex.

By the time her father died three years ago she felt drained by the worry, the long hours on the motorway and the nights at her father’s bedside so that her mother could sleep. But at no time did the 47-year-old, a senior manager with Aviva, the insurer, tell her employer. “I worried that people might think I wasn’t coping,” she says.

Then last year, her mother was hospitalised after a fall. Ms Bright emailed her boss, explaining the situation and emphasising that everything was under control. His reaction surprised her. “He picked up the phone and said: ‘Go and be a carer. For the moment, that’s what you need to do.’”

Ms Bright is one of a generation of workers caught in a demographic pincer, caring for elderly parents and raising children. Since November, she has helped to develop a programme at Aviva to support working carers and create carers’ networks. The company is one of a growing number of employers engaging in such activities as the population of elderly dependants increases. In the UK about 6.5m adults are carers, which the charity Carers UK predicts will rise to 9m by 2037. In the US, more than 1 in 6 adults have caring responsibilities.

Across Europe, 58 per cent of working-age carers are in paid employment, according to Eurofound, an EU agency, but many find it unsustainable and cease work. That creates a problem for carers, who suffer financially, and for employers, who lose experienced workers.

Agile working can help. Swapping an office desk in Bristol for a home office in South Wales allowed Andrew Parfitt Jones, an IT test manager with Lloyds Banking Group, to keep an eye on his elderly father, who suffered from a heart condition and arthritis and lived on the floor below.

Carers can still encounter problems, even when employers are supportive. Line managers who are new to the role are prone to making policies up “rather than ask questions”, says Hugh Neal, who chairs the carers’ network at the professional services group KPMG.

To spare the awkwardness of repeatedly explaining themselves, carers at a number of businesses, including BT, receive a document called a “carer’s passport”, which describes their circumstances and working arrangements.

However, as Emma Codd, managing partner for talent at Deloitte, observes: “You can have all the policies in the world, but if someone believes that [being labelled a carer] will damage their career, the chances are they will go under the radar.”

This is why Katherine Wilson, head of Employers for Carers, an employers’ membership group backed by Carers UK, encourages bosses to lead by example. “For a really senior figure to say ‘I’m a carer’ would be fantastic,” Ms Wilson says. To any candidates, she says: “Please step forward.”

Hearing senior colleagues talk about caring would give encouragement to other people in the same position, rebutting the stereotype of carers as uncommitted, she says.

“Looking after an elderly person whose condition is worsening is very different emotionally from [raising] a child” and is harder for colleagues to relate to, says Victoria Price, a partner at EY.

Ms Price is open about her situation, juggling flexible work with care for her three children and 96-year-old grandmother, who has dementia. To keep her colleagues informed of her whereabouts, she lists all her commitments in an open electronic calendar: attending sports day (available for calls), meeting over grandma’s care (taking calls after 3pm).

“If you can’t attend a meeting in an emergency everyone understands. But the subtext is that work must be done for when the client expects it,” she explains.

As the pressures on working-age adults mount, some employers have added emergency elderly care services to employee benefits. However, these are the exception. Ben Black, co-founder of My Family Care, a leading UK provider, says his company supplies 20 hours of childcare for every hour of back-up care for the elderly.

From a corporate perspective, Ms Wilson urges employers to include consideration for carers in all aspects of policy, from training to leave policies and provision for flexible working.

In practice, this means that whenever a business talks about working parents, it ought also to talk about carers.

Anna Gavriel, 37, despaired of re-establishing herself in real estate planning after a two-year career break to care for her father, who suffered a stroke. Though she kept up her professional accreditation, recruiters saw her “as semi-retired”.

It was only when she spotted an advertisement last year for the Deloitte Return to Work Programme, a 20-week scheme to help professionals restart their careers, that things looked up. Now a senior planner at Deloitte, she hopes other employers recognise careers don’t always run smoothly — because, as she puts it, “life happens, too”.

Story is reproduced courtesy of FT.com – https://www.ft.com/content/a2b2eb0a-72e0-11e7-93ff-99f383b09ff9

Care plans should be reviewed more than once a year, says watchdog

Reviews of people’s care and support plans should be completed more frequently than once a year, a report by Healthwatch, the service user watchdog, has said.

The report said reviewing care plans should instead be a “continuous process”, particularly in cases where a person’s ability to do things for themselves might be changing rapidly.

Under the Care Act, councils should review care plans no later than every 12 months

Missed medication

The report looked at the experiences of people using home care services. It included information from 52 local Healthwatch organisations, and the experiences of 3,415 service users, their families and frontline staff, collected through events, surveys and site visits.

It also found that care workers were frequently unfamiliar with their clients’ care plans and when it was a staff member’s first visit, there was often not enough time to read the plan. In some cases, this was leading to “serious problems”, such as medication being missed.

A survey of  363 people in Newcastle, found one in seven had experienced medication being missed because of the home care provider. One in six respondents also said they felt the provision of medication was either “partly” or “never” safe.

The report recommended that automatic notification systems could be introduced to update staff about important changes to care plans, or prompts could be left around people’s homes as a reminder of their preferences.

Lack of time

The report also said local authorities needed to be more realistic in care plans about how much is achievable in the limited time available in most home care visits.

It found that only half (56%) of 73 people responding to Healthwatch Blackburn with Darwen’s survey felt there was sufficient time to complete all tasks set out in the care plan.

A service user told Healthwatch Redcar and Cleveland: “Sometimes they give me a shower but they go over their time but most of the time they haven’t got time to give me one so I go a couple of weeks without one and that’s not right, I feel dirty.”

Home care workers in Torbay also reported “unrealistic staff rotas” that left them exhausted and having to carry out double-handed care tasks on their own.

Some service users also reported that staff lacked basic skills such as being able to boil an egg or make a bed, which resulted in poor care.

Neil Tester, deputy director of Healthwatch England, said: “We heard examples of compassionate care from dedicated staff, but people also talked about care that doesn’t meet even basic standards. Given the challenges facing the social care sector, it’s more important than ever than ever that people’s voices are heard.”

Margaret Willcox, president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, said: “Most adult social care services in England are providing people with safe, high quality and compassionate care. That they are doing this in the context of rising demand and inadequate funding is a tribute in itself, but there is always room for improvement.”

Story is reproduced courtesy of Community Care - http://www.communitycare.co.uk/2017/08/24/care-plans-reviewed-year-says-watchdog/

Southwark Carers suffer scrumping shocker

As staff left the building on Friday night all of our trees were full of ripening apples, this morning we returned to find the garden larder bare!

If anyone has any information about what happened please let us know if the apples were tasty or not.

I’m sure the team who have been working on the garden for the last few months will want to know.

The robbers haul believed to have a street value of nearly £1.80 / 1 of their 5 a day has left many at the charity shocked and saddened.

“I’m shocked” – Sad looking charity volunteer.

We will be offering counselling to all those who have been affected by this announcement.

Whole Family Support Summer Outing II

Emergency Department Volunteering Pilot

The pilot is specifically orientated to recruit and support people aged over 50 years of age to engage in intensive volunteering. Within the ED the volunteers will be on hand to campion patient care and to help impact and improve the patient experience whilst in the department. This will include roles such as befriending, emotional support, providing refreshments to patients, signposting and even entertainment for parents with young children.

“Every day is so different in our A&E. It’s good to be able to help patients who may be stressed, anxious or lonely, and to make a small difference to their stay at King’s. It is often the little things that can mean so much to a patient. I find volunteering very rewarding and great for the soul.” - Roger, Volunteer

Register your interest:

Tel: 020 3299 4223

E: [email protected]

W: http://www.kch.nhs/about/get-involved/volunteering

Poll reveals four-fifths of unpaid carers experience loneliness or isolation

This rises to 86% for those who provide care for 50 hours or more each week.

Almost nine in 10 carers under 24 (89%) said they feel isolated because of their caring responsibilities.

The poll also found that a third of carers said they had felt lonely or isolated because of not being comfortable talking about caring with their friends.

Others described a lack of time or money to socialise and the difficulty of leaving the house due to caring commitments.

The findings have been released as part of the work Carers UK is conducting with the Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness.

The Commission aims to “start a conversation” about loneliness and encourages the public to combat the “silent epidemic”.

“Loneliness is a powerful, sometimes overwhelming, emotion which all-too-many carers experience in silence,” said Carers UK chief executive Helena Herklots.

“Caring touches all our lives yet society and public services often fail to grasp how isolating looking after a loved one can be.

“Caring for someone is one of the most important things we do but without support to have a life outside caring, it can be incredibly lonely worsened by financial pressures, poor understanding from friends and colleagues, and a lack of regular breaks.”

Seema Kennedy MP and Rachel Reeves MP, who co-chair the Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness, said in a joint statement: “There is no ‘quick fix’ to all the challenges of caring for a loved one but we can all tackle the lack of understanding that can make carers and their families feel alone.

“Jo Cox strongly believed that ‘we have far more in common than that which divides us’.

“We know the power that the right conversation can have – whether at work, with a friend, with your GP, or with a stranger in a supermarket queue.

“Working together – individuals, government and as a society – we can reduce loneliness, one conversation at a time.”

Extra 71,000 care home places needed in eight years, study warns

New dementia friendly café in Rotherhithe

A fun, friendly and relaxed environment where you can take part in lots of new and different activities whilst meeting new people.

 Venue: Time and Talents, The Old Mortuary, St Marychurch Street, Rotherthithe SE16 4JE.

Refreshments will be provided ~ suggested donation of £1.50.

Please contact Chloe on 020 7735 5850 or [email protected] for more information