Care homes across Peterborough to receive better support in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic

Claire Hawkins, CPCCG Chief Nurse for Care Homes outlined a new report to an online meeting of members this week (September 8), she said: “The document describes the CPCCG health model of support to care homes which has developed over the past seven months from the experiences we’ve had both from local authority care homes and privately owned ones.

“The CPCCG Care Home Team originally only had one person dealing with the 174 care homes in our region.

“However, that number has now been increased to six persons and our relationship with those homes is considerably improved on where we were prior to the coronavirus outbreak.”
Jane Collyer from Granta Medical Practices, one of the main providers of medical services commissioned by the CPCCG, asked: “With so many care homes in our region are we perhaps taking on too much, and how is the additional staffing levels to the care team being funded?”
Ms Hawkins replied: “The CPCCG Care Home Support Team is funded by Better Care Fund.

“Since all the controversy surrounding care homes during the Covid-19 crisis has been reported in the media, the government position is that delivery of an enhanced health care service is something that we should be doing anyway.

“Local Authorities already have a statutory commitment to the provision of health care services in care homes, and this must now be extended to privately owned care homes as well.

“We want to work as closely as we possibly can with health care providers and support services so that local authority and private care homes have all the support in a post-Covid society that can be given to them.

“To that end, all the new training programmes that we already have in place and will be providing in the future are being funded from grants, including end of life training.

“The CPCCG had already established a really good relationship with local authorities – we now hold weekly forums with care homes led by local authority care home services which we attend.

“We have also been part of the programme to bring back professional managers into the care home services system.

“Yes, there are 174 homes on our patch, but what we have learned is that from talking together and sharing experiences we all learn as a group and can benefit at this most critical time of year when we are about to instigate a huge flu-vaccination programme ahead of the coming winter months.

“We now have between 80-100 domiciliary providers, and we have found that those care homes who initially did their own PPE training at the beginning of the pandemic were, on the whole, not up to standard.

“PPE training is obviously a vital element in health care especially in care homes, and so we’ve taken that on now as well with standards scrutiny being undertaken by NHS England who check on all the training work being done.

“Are we fully budgeted for it? No, I don’t think that we are. But the CPCCG has gone out on a limb here and picked up on an area that while it is technically not under statutory provision, we’re having to do as part of an increasing area of work and responsibility.

“Certainly, the work and extra training that we’re already doing represents a significant increase on what we did previously.

“Funding is always a concern; but if we get this right and bring confidence to the care home staff, then we think there will be a long term saving in both funds and workload.”

Jane Webster, CPCCG Director of Commissioning, added: “This is an amazing piece of work that has been brought together so quickly.

“Care homes staff were a really scared bunch of people in the early months of coronavirus, and the work that has been done to improve the way that everybody works and communicates now makes me proud to be a nurse.”

Chairman, Gary Howsam said: “I think this would be a very good document to send out to all our local general practices to show them what can and should be done for our most vulnerable residents.

“What we’ve seen by people coming together to work hard to look after people in care homes is very encouraging, and I hope the fantastic work carries on over the winter months.”

The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Clinical Commissioning Group commissions health services on behalf of the patients it serves. Along with its GP member practices, they work together collaboratively to determine how the organisation is governed and how commissioning decisions are made.

The next meeting of the CPCCG is their Annual General Meeting on Tuesday, September 15.

Details can be found on their website for members of the public to view the meeting online: https://www.cambridgeshireandpeterboroughccg.nhs.uk/