England’s leading representative body for independent care homes

Resources

ECCA Campaign on the Funding of Care

Care Home for Sale? Buying a New Care Home?

Social Care Recruitment Campaign

Health and Social Care Briefing

eLearning for the Care Sector – ECCA’s eLearning Portal

Skills Academy

Guidance for Care Homes on the Mental Capacity Act

Green Paper on Reform of Adult Support and Care System - have your say

Care Home for Sale? Buying a New Care Home?
A New Service Making Buying a Care Home Simple, Effective and Inexpensive.

ECCA, in partnership with Scottish Care have launched the “Care Home Property for Sale Service”. This innovative new service, (available online now at http://property.scottishcare.org/), will enable care home owners to advertise their home for sale or look for new premises completely hassle free.

Martin Green, Chief Executive of ECCA said, “ECCA and Scottish Care have joined forces to provide a property service that will get straight to a large target audience of potential purchasers"

The initiative, a partnership between Scottish Care and the English Community Care Association, who between them, represent individual care homes and care home groups throughout the UK, is open to all care home owners and providers, not just members of these two organisations.

This new service offers the opportunity to speed up the sale or purchase of a home by focusing the advertising to those already involved in the sector. Estate agencies will also recognise an inexpensive method of communicating with the sector.

Cost of this service at £500 for eight weeks advert represents an effective and inexpensive way of reaching a potential buyer.

Advertisers will be able to upload their own description and photographs with payment being made through PayPal. Any organisation looking to sell their care home can advertise the sale online with photographs, maps and descriptions regardless of ECCA membership. Prospective buyers can search by region and/or price to find the care home they wish to acquire.

If advertisers should require confidentiality this can also be achieved as the process is under their control.

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Social Care recruitment campaign
The Department of Health are leading on a social care recruitment campaign in partnership with the social care industry. It aims to combine advertising and media work at a national and regional level with recruitment drives by local employers. Please click here for further information

The Health and Social Care Bill:
A Legislative Overview for ECCA Members

“At a time when the sector is facing severe financial pressures with an ever increasing cost base and local authorities holding fees to low levels and in many cases not giving any increases, which is a cut in real terms, the Government needs to look carefully at the enormous cost of the regulatory merger. Quite frankly, we need more money in the services and less in the system” (ECCA Chief Executive Martin Green, 14th December 2007)

The Bill: A Summary

The Health and Social Care Bill is set to enhance professional regulation and create a new integrated regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), for health and adult social care, with focus on providing assurance about the safety and quality of care for patients and service users. For more on this click here

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eLearning for the Care Sector – ECCA’s eLearning Portal, (ECCA members receive 10% discount)
At the recent ECCA Conference “Reach for the Stars”, ECCA in partnership with e3 learning, launched its online eLearning Portal. See http://ecca.e3learning.co.uk/

It is the intention of ECCA to assist its members in raising the standard of practice and knowledge in the workplace. Online training or eLearning is one form of training methodology that can make a significant contribution to this aim. Over time this resource will deliver relevant, high quality, cost effective and educationally sound online courses to its members in an effort to raise the standard of training in the sector.

One of the new courses is “Introduction to Dementia” was developed specifically for the Aged Care Sector in the UK.

If you would like to view samples of any of the courses then contact Vicki Woodthorpe at vicki.woodthorpe@ecca.org.uk

One of the keys to effective online learning is record keeping and management. Online learning makes the administration and management of training easy. Some online learning providers provide content but with limited management capabilities, while others do not provide content, just provide complex, expensive management systems. e³’s offering seems to be “middle of the road” solution with their learning and compliance management system called LearnForce. This automatically monitors, tracks, and records all aspects of online staff training. It also caters for records related to traditional training. It’s a web based system, so you don’t have to worry about looking after it, and its tailored to delivering and managing e³’s high quality courses. According to the company the system provides a range of easy to use reporting and administrative functions that helps reduce administration time.

A really interesting e³ feature is “Adaptics” . According to Dr John Freeman, e³’s Business Development Director, this enables the delivery of refresher content specific to an individual’s needs, thus sustaining levels of competency and awareness in the workplace.

For those that are interested, ECCA is offering a free course for all your staff. According to Dr Freeman, an account can be set up for as many staff as you require. Staff can complete the 15 minute course in Hand Hygiene without charge or obligation. The course provides an effective insight into why hand hygiene is so important and best practices for implementing good hand hygiene. Just visit the website http://ecca.e3learning.co.uk/ to find out more.

While training online might not suit every skill needed, it’s obvious that many organisations are using it to great advantage in the battle to maintain staff training while keeping costs down. Maybe it’s success is due to the fact that the training is there when you need it; or that the system keeps track of the training. Whatever the case, there is no doubt it’s worth looking into.

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Skills Academy
ECCA is involved in discussions with a range of other stakeholders about developing a Social Care Skills Academy. If this Academy is going to provide something useful for the sector it is vital that providers buy into the concept right from the start. 

A Committee, chaired by Chris Humphries, Director General of City & Guilds, is looking at how we frame a proposal and we really need to hear from providers about what they think the Academy should deliver and where you think the focus of its outcome should be.

The Academy will require financial input from the sector but this will mean it will be the sector’s Academy delivering what the sector both needs and wants. ECCA welcomes any feedback from you on what you would like to see a Skills Academy achieving.

Please send your thoughts to maria.patterson@ecca.org.uk

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Green Paper on Reform of Adult Support and Care System - have your say
Martin Green has received a letter from Andy Burnham, Chief Secretary to HM Treasury, ,John Healey, Minister for Local Government, Ivan Lewis, Minister for Care Services and Anne McGuire, Minister for Disabled People. The letter informs Martin of the Government's intention to produce a Green Paper on the reform of the Adult Support and Care System. See the letter

ECCA intends to do all it can to contribute to the debate around the funding of long-term care. To this end we invite and encourage ECCA members to contribute to the debate by sharing your ideas, opinions and suggestions with us. Please contact Maria Patterson with your thoughts on maria.patterson@ecca.org.uk

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Guidance for Care Homes on the Mental Capacity Act
ECCA has produced guidance to help care homes understand the new Mental Capacity Act. The guidance provides a background to the Act and practical tools to ensure ECCA members are fully equipped to comply with this very important piece of legislation.
Download the guidance

Approved Mental Capacity Act Training Providers
Is your organisation interested in providing training on the Mental Capacity Act? ECCA has compiled a list of approved trainers on the Act. Before downloading an application form for inclusion please have a look at the criteria for approval. If you are confident that your organisation meets out criteria please download the application form and send it to maria.patterson@ecca.org.uk Please note that the application fee is £100.
See the list of trainers
If you have any further queries please call Maria on 020 7492 4844

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