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Please visit our Community Voices Online website for up to date news about health and social care services in Hampshire. Many thanks
Blindintuition; Enabling Assisted Technology Solutions......
Delivering Assisted Technology training to the disabled community, teaching various forms of assisted technology Dolphin Guide and Supernova to enable visually impaired and disabled
people to get back into the work place, and or to continue living a more independent life. Empowering people through technology. We are pleased to announce in addition to our usual training, we are now teaching the BBC First Click basic computer course to the over 50’s. We currently have to charge a small admin fee, (price on request) but are seeking funding for this course to be able to off er places free of charge. We teach various subjects and show you how to do most things on a computer, some of which are charged at a fi xed fee and others on a donation basis. We have a training Centre separate to our charity shop in West Street Fareham. We not only train, but off er advice on most computing topics. Our ‘Tech dept’ will try and help where possible or signpost you in the right direction if we can’t. In March 2012 we will be opening a support and resource centre for products for the disabled community and support/advice to disabled people, carers and family. The charity shop is looking for volunteers as well as donations so please help if you can. Our website has a downloadable leafl et which explains what we can accept and what we can’t as space is limited. We can collect material within the Fareham area for free but a donation towards fuel costs maybe required for our volunteer driver if outside of the borough. Visit the Blind Intuition website for more information. Charity Shop 01329 283505 Training Centre 01329 287970 Blindintuition Training Centre, Suite 3, 11 Queens Gate, Queens Road , Fareham, Hampshire PO16 ONP
Nursing People At Home: The Issues, The Stories, The Actions – A New Report From The Queen’s Nursing Institute
Thank you to those who took part in this survey, which we promoted in our August 2011 Newsletter. The subsquent report on the current state of nursing in the home, shows that what patients value most are the attributes of skilled and experienced community nurses: the ability to assess unexpected situations, coordinate services, and answer questions about reatment. The report follows the QNI’s Right Nurse, Right Skills campaign, which received hundreds of stories from the public describing the impact that the dilution of skills in community nursing teams can have on the quality of care. While 70% of experiences of nursing in the home described by patients and carers in a QNI survey were very positive, there were many examples of poor care. Fewer than half the people who responded knew whether they were treated by a registered nurse. Baroness Cumberlege welcomed the report, commenting, ‘Home is best. Home is where people want to be. But community nurses care for some people living in very challenging and inadequate living places. Nowadays nurses do very sophisticated things in the home, but professional compassion remains at the core of what they do. We have an ageing population and a shrinking healthcare workforce. It is well-researched, succinct and containing startling fi gures. The most common question asked in hospital? is, ‘When can I go home?’ 65% of people want to die at home; only 20% do die at home. This has to change.’ Professor Dickon Weir-Hughes, Chief Registrar of the NMC added, ‘this excellent and insightful report will be of major benefit to policy-makers and those who plan healthcare workforces.’ Jill Fraser, co-founder of the charity ‘Kissing it Better’, spoke for patients’ families and carers. She said, ‘we need to work with people in the community, with families and with volunteers, to improve care Rosemary Cook CBE, Director of the QNI said, ‘People were very clear about what they wanted from community nursing. They wanted competence, confi dence and caring. Sometimes they encountered nurses who were rushed, who lacked knowledge or seemed disinterested’. The report highlights several reasons for the loss of skills in the community, including the decline in commissions of district nurse training, an increased reliance on less experienced nurses and a growing trend to replace nurses with health care assistants. Ms Cook added: ‘Now is the time when everyone – nurses, managers, commissioners and policy makers - must take action to prevent the loss of one of the most precious assets in our health care system: expert nursing in the home.’ Find the report on the Queens Nursing Institute website. A printed version of the report is available and can be requested by calling our offi ce 020 7549 1400 or emailing
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. Hampshire LINk will be addressing the issue of ‘Hospital at Home’ at its AGM on the 1st March 2012. For further details and how to book a place, read on.
Trust on course to become Foundation TrustPortsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust is on course to become a Foundation Trust and is making progress towards making an application to monitor, the independent regulator of Foundation Trusts.The Trust has the full support of the Department of Health, the main commissioning Primary Care Trust and the Strategic Health Authority in reaching this goal. All parties have signed a Tripartite Formal Agreement (TFA) which affi rms this commitment. Specifi cally the TFA confirms the date when the Trust will submit their “FT ready” application to the Department of Health to begin their formal assessment towards achievement of FT status. The TFA is available on the Trust’s website. It is recognised that the Trust, along with many other parts of the NHS, is facing financial challenges year on year. Within the health
economy locally these include the continued drive by commissioners for out of hospital patient care against rising demand, the additional costs arising from investing in state-of-the-art hospital facilities and the requirement to make year on year cost efficiency
improvements. Despite these challenges the Trust broke even in the last fi nancial year (2010/11) after meeting a cost improvement plan of £31.5m. Whilst Private Finance Initiative (PFI) payments are part of the Trust’s fi nancial challenge these make up only 10% of its expenditure and will not prevent the achievement of FT status. In addition to the Trust’s own fi nancial review mechanisms it is taking part in the government’s national review of PFIs. Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust is in preparation to submit its application before 31 March 2013 and is working with its partners to develop its long term business and fi nancial plan.
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