CRESS
2006/2007
CRESS
goes from
strength to strength
with a well trained, dedicated and caring workforce and ever improving
working
practices. Earlier this year we signed a contract with Essex County
Council and
West Essex PCT for Cress service provision from April 2006 to March
2009 and we
are glad of the stability that this affords us.
The
Commission
for Social Care
Inspection (CSCI) carried out our annual inspection on 13th
June
this year.
The inspector arrived after giving us
just half an hour’s advance warning but of course the
inspection visit is just
the very tip of the iceberg. Part of the complex inspection process
involves completing
a self-audit which has changed considerably from previous years and
required a
whole new approach and a lot of hard work to complete. In addition new
policies
and procedures had to be devised and current ones updated to keep up
with the
National Care Standards which in turn involved a complete reworking of
the
CRESS Staff Handbook. As a reward for our hard work we were awarded an
‘excellent’ rating which will translate to 3 stars
(the top rating) when the
new system of star ratings comes in to use in 2008. The full report is
available in the Mind and CRESS offices for anyone who would like to
read it
and can also be accessed online on the CSCI official website.
We
are
currently operating with a
staff of 11 Care Assistants and a Project Assistant. Two Care
Assistants left Cress
in the past year, one for personal reasons and the other moving out of
the area.
Two
of our Care
Assistants are
currently working towards their NVQ Level 2 (Care) qualification which
will
bring our number of NVQ qualified Care Assistants to 8. This year our
continuous programme of staff training and updates has included
Parkinson’s
Disease, Mental Health Awareness, Protection of Vulnerable Adults,
Movement and
Handling, Food Hygiene, First Aid, Health and Safety, Fire Safety and
Safety
for Lone Workers. In addition our Project Assistant Joanne Woolley and
I
attended a training session on the ‘Supervision of
Teams’. Training is
sometimes difficult to source and is increasingly expensive but not
something
on which we can afford to cut corners.
Sixty-six
different families
received a service from Cress in the past year with an average of 41
Service
Users per month. Care hours for the year were slightly up on the
preceding year
at 8941 – an average of 745 per month. There was a steady
stream of new
referrals throughout the year which translated to a 24% increase from
the
previous year. However, we are also seeing more complex cases which in
some
instances lead to service provision for only a short period of time or
do not
lead to any service provision at all.
Sadly
we were
unable to obtain new
funding for our Solo project and earlier this year wrote with regret to
our
Service Users to inform them that the service would terminate at the
end of
April 2007. Solo funding ran out some time ago and we were able to keep
going
through the generosity of Maldon Mind but this situation could not
continue
indefinitely. There is a demand for the type of service that Solo
provided and
the good news is that Solo can easily be restarted if funding becomes
available
in the future.
Our
hardworking
Care Assistants are
our biggest asset and my sincere thanks goes out to every one of them
for their
sometimes superhuman efforts to provide the Cress service to a maximum
number
of Clients. Thank you also to Joanne Woolley, our Project Assistant
– a role
which has evolved considerably since she took it on 4 years ago
– and to Linda
Dutaut who has been administering our project with great efficiency for
the
past 9 years. You are all ‘super heroes’!
Dawn
Brooks, Project Manager
