Ensuring the right numbers of skilled nursing staff in the right place at the right time is a laudable ambition of the new NHS Long Term Plan.

At the Royal College of Nursing we believe that this vision can only be realised if key individuals and organisations within the health care system – including the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care – are accountable in law for safe staffing levels.

There are currently around 40,000 vacancies for registered nurses in England alone, and one of the reasons for this chronic shortage is that no one is responsible for guaranteeing there is enough staff to ensure patients receive consistently safe and good quality care.

This lack of clear accountability cannot be allowed to continue.

We need to decide if the Institute should be dissolved or continue at the AGM and seminar on 16 July 2019. We have an executive meeting on 21 May where a recommendation on this needs to be agreed.

Since the last AGM on 18 July 2018,  there has been little interaction with new or old trustees and our Chair Dr Dayani has left Birmingham and will be seeking a replacement.

His view is that there is an important future role in:

“I think the Institute could be very useful as a think-tank/forum for ideas on healthcare issues wider than care of the elderly. It is independent; its membership is largely frontline and academic health and social care workers who have an opportunity to say things as they see them (with appropriate solutions). There is a need for such a voice as unfortunately the NHS and Social Care are failing to impact dramatically on outcomes within the West Midlands and arguably more widely.”

What are the implications of the workforce crisis and the fact that we have to change to continue to supply a fit for purpose health care system? I start with selective quotes from Roy Lilley’s daily blog of the 28th February This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
“There is almost no part of the NHS that does not have a people problem.
... changing the way, we do things is painful, uncomfortable and contested but is probably the only way out.

Interwoven are the paradoxes; technology changes faster than we are prepared to evolve our services. Outpatients fingered by Britnell and singled out in the LTP, the unreformed backwater of a 60's NHS.

In an OECD survey 70% of doctors and 80% of nurses reported being over-skilled for aspects of their work. It is a criminal waste.

Britnell calls on us to reframe the debate about workforce-planning and shift our thinking to productivity, health and wealth creation. He has been to 77 countries; he knows what's what.”

We as human beings are living longer, and the prevalence of loneliness and isolation among the elderly increases. Is it inevitable?
We are a supposedly civilised society, yet many of our elderly live with virtually no communication with others for weeks on end. We assume they have contact with someone- don’t they?
At present 1 in 3 people over the age of 65 live alone in the UK. Statistics say this is set to increase by more than 50% in the next 25years. While some older adults choose to live alone, others may have no choice.
Loneliness increases the likelihood of mortality by 26%. Research shows that loneliness and social isolation are harmful to our health: lacking social connections is comparable risk factor for early death as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and is worse for us than well known risk factors such as obesity and physical inactivity.

Re-inventing a Long Term Dream: Do we need new systems to deliver “working together” We run a huge risk of repeating the mistakes of the policy 10 (PPM ?70) years ago, thinking that integration is solved just by fiddling with organizational form options” M. Winn 21.5.2018 I have had a career long passion in delivering services across sector boundaries as geriatric service lead of hospital and community health facilities, running the Institute’s Excellent Care Award, participating in the development of Stroke Illness pathways , and as a former chair of joint planning in Birmingham. My purpose with this publication is to seek examples of Good Practice, building on our experience from the “Excellent Care Award” to inform the work now being done under the new national drive to promote integration in commissioning and in delivering health and social care. The driver for this strategy is the long-standing perception that underfunded fragmented poorly delivered services can be reorganized to provide cost effective services with the person in need at the centre of the change required. The World Health Organisation (WHO) and NHS England (NHSE) see the patient/citizen as the pivot round which service configuration should be structured. But most service planning is initiated centrally and in the recent Sustainability Transformation Partnerships (STPs now becoming Integrated Care Systems (ICS)) the service user seems the last group involved in planning and driving service change. NHS clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) do have a requirement to consult their populations and some are doing this well but many are too small and lack the skills to deliver.

Hello from the new Chair

As the newly elected Chair, I thought this may be an opportune moment to introduce myself and lay out a little of my vision for the Institute, given all that is happening within the West Midlands.

So, Hello! My name is Dr Andrew Dayani. I am Executive Medical Director at Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS FT and was a GP for 21 years before moving into an Executive Director role. That gives you a flavour, but doesn’t tell the whole story, as I have also been an Occupational Physician, Community Hospital doctor and trained in Dermatology and Cardiology, whilst being involved in commissioning and medical politics. I like to keep busy!  Until last year I lived and worked in Somerset.

More Information, Less Accessibility
Mike Marshall MIHM, DHSM – IAH Trustee

I have probably driven my Trustee colleagues to distraction over completing my first ever blog for the West Midlands Institute of Ageing and Health. It was due in January 2018 and I was ill at the time. Since then holidays, retired life and procrastination seem to have got in the way. It’s always been the same: as a Health and Social Care practitioner / Manager/ Commissioner - reports finished at the deadline and funding bids submitted on the day (the last of which gained £2.3 million from the Government!).
 
Well, here I am finally at the keyboard, relatively fit and able, unlike many of the older people we seek to support through the Institute’s work.
I can travel to my GP, access hospital appointments (unfortunately not in my home town of Bromsgrove in the actual community hospital I commissioned) but in Redditch (or Kidderminster) some 7 miles away.
 
Should I have experienced a stroke the journey would be to Evesham, 48 miles round-trip with no direct bus route. Trains? Forget it. Older relative, no car? – no chance.

The success of modern medicine has resulted in many people surviving strokes, heart attacks and cancer when previously they would have died prematurely. This has resulted in an ageing population.  With this changing demographic comes the challenge of how to achieve healthy ageing.  Sadly many older people are not achieving this, and the numbers of older people living with frailty are rising.  People living with frailty often have multiple chronic illnesses, weak muscles, poor mobility, exhaustion and are dependent on others for their care (Clegg, 2013).  They are the main users of heath and social care and have high mortality (Shamliyan, 2013).  Decisions around care choices are often complex, particularly where patients have dementia or are coming to the end of life.  Choices must take into account patient preferences as well as what is achievable and sensible to maintain a good quality of life. 

Sue Lillyman, IAH Trustee

Although there is evidence of good care and some equality for older people we still hear accounts in the media about how they continue to experience social exclusion, marginalisation and oppression at an international level. These are often, (according to Duffy et al 2012), due to the negative stereotypical views of older people that are prevalent in society. Dabove in 2013 called for an international convention on human rights for older people. Whilst she questions whether older people should have different rights she suggests that there is a need for a convention with more consistence to the tools and institutions, principles, rules laws and judicial practices that are accessed and available to the older person. She highlights the issues of capacity, empowerment, freedom, civil rights, integrity and health, abuse, property rights, legal issues, social rights and security and access to justice. In October this year the All Parliamentary Group for Ageing and Older People in the UK launched a major new inquiry into human rights of older people. This aims to improve the protection of rights of older people with an international legally binding agreement addressing the issues raised above. These changes have already been achieved for people with disabilities through the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities and for children with a further Convention on the Rights of the Child, it is now timely for there to be an additional one for older people.