Recently in Research Category

The health and sport committee of the Scottish Parliament has launched an inquiry into care regulation.

Its sole aim is to establish if the regulatory system is fit to ensure the care of older people is both safe and good quality.

It's seeking responses to the following questions:

• Can we be confident that the regulatory system is picking up on care services where the quality of care is poor?
• Are there any particular weaknesses in the current system?
• Does the system adequately take into account the views of service users?
• Does the registration and regulatory system provide an appropriate basis for the regulation, inspection and enforcement of integrated social and NHS care in the community?

It will be interesting to compare the results of this inquiry to the report of the health select committee in Westminster into the functioning of the Care Quality Commission, which regulates care in England, due for publication later this year.

The committee is calling for written evidence before 24 August.

Further oral evidence sessions will be held in September.

Yesterday, the Department for Work and Pensions published some statistics on benefit fraud. The overall conclusion was that £1.2bn was being lost to fraud.

However, buried in the statistics was some data on fraudulent claims for carer's allowance. But it was from 1997.

When I asked the DWP why they hadn't looked at fraud in relation to carer's allowance in 14 years, the response was that it prioritised which benefits to look at regularly by risk. Calculating rates of fraud is, apparently, quite lengthily and difficult.

Clearly, the DWP feels carers are a pretty honest bunch.

This is despite the fact that carer's allowance now ranks as the benefit with the second highest rate of fraud at 3.9% (just behind job seekers allowance at 4.1%). That's if you can even compare stats from 1997 and 2001, which I don't think you can because, I understand, fraud rates were significantly higher than in 1997.

As a celebration of this vote of confidence, I think it's appropriate that we all enjoy something else from 1997...

Do you know the core principles of dementia care? If not, then you should probably check-out some guidance published today by the Department of Health.

I don't often go to the trouble of praising these kinds of documents, but this one is genuinely a very good starting point for anyone new to dementia care or wanting to refresh their practice. I have to read a lot of documents in a hurry in this job and I can vouch for the fact this is one of the easiest to navigate that I've seen in a while.

Insurance experts have backed a compulsory insurance system to fund long term care for adults, the Telegraph reports.

The Telegraph highlights the response from the Association of British Insurers (who would probably stand to gain under any insurance system, unless it is entirely administered by the state) which says a voluntary system won't work.

This doesn't make them any different from anyone else, most people responding to the consultation said the same thing.

But the comments section on the Telegraph story reveals quite a heavy amount of opposition to compulsory funding, most people seem to think their National Insurance will cover it.

In its own way this story is a microcosm of the problem facing Andrew Dilnot and the ministers implementing his reports recommendations.

The Financial Times today has a big splash on the state of the care home sector. Needless to say it paints a fairly bleak picture (though it's behind a pay wall).

Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of today's coverage is where the paper has collated star ratings information for the major providers giving the percentage rated poor by provider.

Four seasons - 15.5%
BUPA - 12.2%
Southern Cross - 18.5%
Minister Care Group - 27%

The paper has followed closely the fate of embattled care provider, Southern Cross, over the last few months.

It goes into some detail exploring the financial problems facing the sector. Mike Parish, chief executive of Care UK compares it to bursting of the internet bubble in the early noughties.

The story is complex and multi-faceted so I wouldn't be doing it justice to paraphrase it, you'll have to buy the paper. But if you fancy knowing how the care home sector came to be facing problems, like those at Southern Cross, it's an illuminating read.

Finally, on a point of vanity I will also point out that the FT decries the 70% fall in inspections by the CQC since the new system came in, revealed by "an FT investigation". Only we did that story at the beginning of the month.

A good news story sneaked out last week, but never seemed to hit the radar.

A report by Healthcare at Home today, calculates that spending money helping those with dementia could save £127m from NHS budgets.

Healthcare at Home, are in their own words 'the UK's largest home healthcare provider' so they do have a bit of a motive for concluding that, but be that as it may, it seems like a fairly sizable saving. Plus, the Alzheimer's Society are promoting it and they do tend to know a thing or two about this.

Make of it what you will.

Unemployment makes women four times as likely to become isolated within their communities, according to a new report published today by thinktank, the RSA.

Power Lines, the second report from the RSA's Connected Communities project, found that unemployment doubles the likelihood of men becoming isolated but more than quadruples it with women.

Power Lines argues that the Big Society is currently dominated by the so called 'usual suspects' - an existing civic core of well educated, middle aged professionals - and that more should be done to improve the social networks of isolated people such as the retired and unemployed

It concludes that the government's efforts to build the big society risk exacerbating existing inequalities unless more is done to support those who are isolated within their communities.

Among recommendations that report says that:

•           The government's 5,000 new community organisers should be trained and encouraged to build the social networks of those who suffer from few local connections.
•           The Cabinet Office should use the Communities First Fund to provide grants to support community groups that specifically aim to build and diversify users' social connections.
•           Local authorities should explore new ways of supporting activities that foster community spirit, both through removing red tape and through funding devices such as social impact bonds, or simply by giving the necessary tools and guidance to communities.
•           Local authorities should assess their funding of community groups on the contribution they make to building stronger, more diverse social networks.
•           Local businesses should both promote and benefit from local networks through the funding of hyper-local websites. Research examining local websites in London found that over 4 out of 10 respondents had made new contacts in their neighbourhoods as a result of using the website.
•           At an individual - to - individual level, a more networked approach can be used to both promote micro-business and relieve isolation.

Then number of adult safeguarding referrals has rose 9%in 2009-10 official figures show.

Wales Online reports that the annual adult safeguarding report from the Care and Social Services Inspectorate Wales shows that the total referrals were up to just short of 5,000 over the course of the year.

That sounds like a bad thing but given we know that abuse is vastly under reported it's probably a very good.

The Health and Social Care Bill could reach second reading stage in the House of Lords before the summer recess in July, former Labour minister Lord Warner believes.

Warner, who was speaking at a conference on the future of social care organised by health consultancy LCS International Consulting, says he was told by sources that the Upper House is still working to this timetable.

In typically pugnacious style, Warner, who was also promoting his new book "A suitable case for treatment: The NHS and Reform", is an arch-critic of the way the NHS is arranged and says that too much money is locked up in a failed business model of acute hospitals.

He believes that integration between health and social care can only be carried out if a variety of health and social care providers can come in and work across both sectors but in health this is difficult because of the NHS monopoly.

He thinks that much of Lansley's diagnosis for GP commissioning and greater competition could help unlock some money for social care by breaking up monopolistic health provision and help bring about better health and social care integration.

He therefore wants to see the parts of the Bill that many don't like retained - such as introducing measures to promote competition between service providers.

"We've got an interesting hiatus at the moment. I can't remember a government launching such a socking great Bill and then deciding to knock-off for half-time - an interesting political approach," he says of the decision to delay progress of the Bill through the House of Commons. 

Warner adds that it was generally acknowledged by ministers and shadow ministers that the social care pot needed to be bigger and more closely related to the size of the NHS pot.

However he argues that creating a national care service, as his own party wanted to do when in government, would not happen because it is "unaffordable" as "the Scots have found". Now he says "the Welsh seem to want to have a go at defying financial gravity".

Instead you've got to move to a position where the providers of health and social care can operate over the health and social care boundary.

He says this will mean a more adventurous business model for social care providers and for the NHS to commission different types of models. This will mean implications for the assessment models of both social care and health.