Older People: Health and Social Care

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they plan to implement the recommendations in the report Delivering Dignity.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)]

My Lords, the Government welcome the report from the dignity in care commission and will consider carefully all the recommendations addressed to government. We will respond to the commission in detail in due course. Many of the solutions to the issues in the report lie with the local NHS, social care providers and other key stakeholders. The Government will encourage the sharing of best practice by bringing people together and putting in place the right system incentives to enable providers to increase the quality of their services to older people.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

Following the report, Delivering Dignity, which was published today, will the Government instruct Monitor and the Care Quality Commission to require all authorised providers to seek, monitor and act on feedback from patients and their families, and will the Nursing and Care Quality Forum be widened to look at all aspects of care home staffing, root out poor care and ensure that action is taken so that respect of the individual is an “always” event in the delivery of care?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the NHS outcomes framework contains two domains that are highly relevant to this area. The NHS Commissioning Board will be in prime position to monitor those areas of the domains that relate to the patient experience. However, I have no doubt that the CQC will continue to do its work in maintaining essential standards of quality and safety. The Nursing and Care Quality Forum is an independent group and it is therefore for the forum itself to consider how to take forward the issues raised in the recommendation, but I understand that its chair, Sally Brearley, was already planning to consider care homes as part of the next phase of the forum’s work. She has already approached a number of individuals to strengthen the forum’s membership and add further expertise in that area.