There’s a famous quote – sometimes attributed to Albert Einstein or Mark Twain – that says doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. In social care right now, this feels very apt.
I’m really struggling with media headlines about the “crisis” in social care and the impact on overstretched NHS resources. If you believe what you read and hear it’s simply a matter of funds. If we throw more money at the challenge, it’ll all be fine.
Lack of investment over many years is a major contributory factor to the issues faced in the world of social care, but it isn’t all the fault of local and national government. Until recently, the sector has made a great deal of money out of older people living in residential care homes. It’s relied predominantly on local authorities to pay costs with annual increases in fees the norm. So it’s had no real incentive to change, improve or evolve over the past 30 years.
Since 2010, fee levels have either stayed the same or got worse. In many instances private paying customers have subsidised their local authority funded neighbours in the same home. The quality of what’s on offer and the continued development of staff has taken a slide. We could blame the lack of funds or we could take a good look at ourselves and ask whether what we’re offering has any appeal to a consumer.
‘When I get old, I don’t want to be put into a care home’
It’s not just me who doesn’t want to go into a care home when they are old, it’s most of the people I speak to from 40 to 90 years old. That doesn’t mean I want to be alone.
There are great, appealing, scalable models of older age care and support being delivered around the world every day. The Green House Project in the US has replaced nursing homes with small households where older people live in a real home environment rather than an institution, supported by multi-skilled staff. While in Australia, HammondCare has designed domestic cottages for people living with dementia, again providing a home-like environment.
Why can’t we bring these models to the UK?
Well of course we can, but it’s really hard to change and who wants to own the challenge?
Whether we’re receiving the service or delivering it, we all need to feel valued. I’ve seen wastage in the NHS and across social care. And it’s often around how we enable people to do their best work. We need to allow everyone to take more risks, show their initiative and help older people to continue to participate in their daily lives. That’s really living and guess what? It costs less to deliver.
I spoke alongside two fellow innovators in the sector, Graham Care and Home Instead Senior Care, at the recent National Care and Dementia conference. We all agreed that you need to find your niche and make your offer extremely compelling to your customers in order to succeed. We all work with older people across the spectrum of need and we can make it successful.
Large institutions can learn a great deal from entrepreneurial business about change, customer satisfaction, and financial sustainability. If nobody buys our service, we don’t get our paycheck.
So surely it’s time to learn from others, collaborate and deliver compelling, joined-up services that people would be delighted to pay for.
I’m looking forward to changing the social care headlines to positive stories.
Sara McKee is founder and director of market innovation at Evermore
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