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Why my social work experience led me to specialise on foetal alcohol spectrum disorders

CommunityCare.co.uk MH services news - Sun, 04/14/2013 - 07:42
After 27 years as a practising social worker Liam Curran became a certified trainer on foetal alcohol spectrum disorders. Here, he tells Community Care about the highs and lows of his new job.
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Social work 'should be transforming mental health'

CommunityCare.co.uk MH services news - Sun, 04/14/2013 - 07:42
It’s time for mental health social work leaders and councils to pull together to assert social care and social work’s role in mental health care, writes the College of Social Work’s Ruth Allen.
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Social workers need to fight the threat to social models of mental health care

CommunityCare.co.uk MH services news - Sun, 04/14/2013 - 07:42
The medical domination of mental health threatens to railroad the social perspectives that underpin social work and are vital to quality care. It’s time to fight back, writes Daisy Bogg.
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Three-quarters of Camhs staff see budgets slashed as morale plummets

CommunityCare.co.uk MH services news - Sun, 04/14/2013 - 07:42
Survey of workers in children's and adolescent mental health services reveals a demoralised workforce struggling with rising caseloads, lengthening waiting lists and dwindling team numbers.
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How the law decides responsibility for funding mental health care

CommunityCare.co.uk MH services news - Sun, 04/14/2013 - 07:42
A recent case shows that councils can still be made responsible for funding a person's mental health aftercare even if they have no previous connection with the area, says legal columnist Ed Mitchell.
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10 ways service users want AMHPs to improve Mental Health Act assessments

CommunityCare.co.uk MH services news - Sun, 04/14/2013 - 07:42
The 2012 national AMHP leads network conference heard from a service user who is using her experiences of the mental health system to help AMHPs reflect on Mental Health Act assessments. Andy McNicoll reports.
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Mental health patients sent 80 miles away for 'poor care' amid bed crisis

CommunityCare.co.uk MH services news - Sun, 04/14/2013 - 07:42
Year-long inquiry into schizophrenia care calls for "radical overhaul" of poor acute mental health care and warns many inpatient units are "stressful, chaotic" places.
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'Don't ignore housing in response to Winterbourne'

CommunityCare.co.uk LD services news - Sun, 04/14/2013 - 07:42
There has been a worrying lack of discussion of housing in the post-Winterbourne plans to move people with learning disabilities out of institutional settings into community settings. This must change, warns Alicia Wood
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Practice standards for best interests assessors launched

CommunityCare.co.uk LD services news - Sun, 04/14/2013 - 07:42
College of Social Work sets six capabilities that councils should require of professionals appointed to make key recommendations about people under Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards.
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Learning disabled people die 16 years earlier than others, finds study

CommunityCare.co.uk LD services news - Sun, 04/14/2013 - 07:42
Research finds people with learning disabilities more likely to die from causes that could have been prevented by good healthcare than other people.
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How social workers can help bring learning disabled people home

CommunityCare.co.uk LD services news - Sun, 04/14/2013 - 07:42
Supporting people with learning disabilities to return from out-of-area placements requires thorough assessment, person-centred commissioning and time, according to social workers in one service praised by government.
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Social investors urged to help end learning disability housing crisis

CommunityCare.co.uk LD services news - Sun, 04/14/2013 - 07:42
Government cuts to social housing and capital spending are reducing housing options for learning disabled people. Mencap's housing arm is asking socially-minded investors to fill the gap through its new charity bond, says director Alastair Graham.
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Direct payments, personal budgets and individual budgets

CommunityCare.co.uk LD services news - Sun, 04/14/2013 - 07:42
Direct payments and personal budgets are a central part of the personalisation agenda to give service users choice and control over their care and support.
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How Winterbourne-style placements can be brought to an end

CommunityCare.co.uk LD services news - Sun, 04/14/2013 - 07:42
Chris Bull, the person charged with helping end inappropriate hospital placements for people with learning disabilities, outlines how he intends to support commissioners to achieve this aim.
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Adult care will be damaged if Osborne maintains current level of cuts, directors warn

CommunityCare.co.uk Adult services news - Fri, 04/12/2013 - 16:53
Adult socal care would not escape unscathed if chancellor George Osborne imposes cuts of more than 3% on councils in 2015, says Association of Directors of Adult Social Services resources lead.
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Spending review must limit cuts to adult care, directors warn ministers

CommunityCare.co.uk Adult services news - Fri, 04/12/2013 - 16:53
Adult socal care would not escape unscathed if chancellor George Osborne imposes cuts of more than 3% on councils in 2015, says Association of Directors of Adult Social Services resources lead.
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Balancing safeguarding and personalisation - a practitioners' dialogue

CommunityCare.co.uk Adult services news - Fri, 04/12/2013 - 13:24
Safeguarding co-ordinator Gaynor McGinty feels advice provided in a recently published adult protection guide underplays the importance of the service user's ability to control their own life. Guide author Pete Morgan responds
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SCRs to get more expensive but no guarantee on learning

CommunityCare.co.uk Childrens services news - Wed, 04/10/2013 - 18:42
It was announced last week that the case of six children who all died in a house fire, deliberately started by their parents, would be the subject of a serious case review.
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'Don't ignore housing in response to Winterbourne'

CommunityCare.co.uk LD services news - Wed, 04/10/2013 - 17:37
There has been a worrying lack of discussion of housing in the post-Winterbourne plans to move people with learning disabilities out of institutional settings into community settings. This must change, warns Alicia Wood
Categories: Communities RSS Feed

'Don't ignore housing in response to Winterbourne'

CommunityCare.co.uk Adult services news - Wed, 04/10/2013 - 17:37
There has been a worrying lack of discussion of housing in the post-Winterbourne plans to move people with learning disabilities out of institutional settings into community settings. This must change, warns Alicia Wood
Categories: Communities RSS Feed

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PwC Report on the Current State of Project Management

Submitted by Hugo_Minney on Fri, 05/17/2013 - 10:44

Keywords:

PwC Project Management ReportPwC found that successful companies are getting more mature in their project management ability.  This raises the game – successful companies have lower costs from fewer failed projects, and less successful companies have to work harder to catch up.  There are some important lessons to take this report for everyone – Read more…

Joy instead of tedium

Submitted by Hugo_Minney on Fri, 05/10/2013 - 21:04

Keywords:

The Office

Every office has them - the tasks that have to be done that nobody likes doing.  Whether it's the audit, the wages, standard letters, whatever it is - someone has to do it and it feels like a waste of time and money.

Why should you care?

So you employ somebody, so why do you care about how tedious the task is? Well they are costing money, to do something that could be done far more effectively.

Learning from the Past

Submitted by HugoM on Fri, 05/10/2013 - 20:27

Evidence for service improvement

Many public service changes have little basis in evidence. Their success (or otherwise) does not appear to depend on how 'good' the policy itself is, but rather on how it has been implemented. This relies on staff attitudes and relationships. My research falls into a number of broad categories: finding out what is currently happening; what people think about it; and what people think it will mean.

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Taxonomy upgrade extras:

Consumer Price Index (CPI) Calculator for SROI

Submitted by Hugo_Minney on Tue, 04/16/2013 - 10:05

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CPI components

When calculating a Social Return on Investment (SROI) evaluation or SROI forecast , sometimes you have to rely on published figures from reports.  But if these are from a few years ago, then they probably need adjusting for inflation.

There are calculators on the web to do this for you, but I found them cumbersome and it was difficult to keep a record of what calculator I'd used, and how, for which value - auditability and transparency is vital for SROI.  So here's a spreadsheet to do this properly!

Leadership and Margaret Thatcher

Submitted by Hugo_Minney on Tue, 04/09/2013 - 14:19

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Margaret Thatcher - a greta leader?

Leadership is one of those characteristics that most people recognise, some people claim, and nobody manages to explain.

We can identify the great leaders from the past and present, and talk about their characteristics, but it is too easy to overlook the hundreds of thousands of people who claimed to be leaders or tried to be leaders, and who shared these characteristics.  We need to identify what the great leaders have that the failures or mediocre leaders don’t have, or we will be no nearer to identifying the characteristics of leadership.

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