Dementia Awareness Week

Hamish Hayes writes about his experience of loneliness and dementia  http://www.campaigntoendloneliness.org.uk/guest-blog/dementia-awareness-week/

Local councils are dropping facilities such as lunch clubs as they say that they can't afford them.  Haringey council decided last year that it couldn't afford the £171,000 a year that it costs to run lunch clubs out of its £273 million budget.   Lorna Reith - the ex deputy leader of the council - made the chilling statement  "There will be people who will do without, they will be at home and lonely, but actually they won’t die".  http://www.hornseyjournal.co.uk/news/haringey_council_cuts_will_leave_elderly_lonely_but_not_dead_says_deputy_leader_1_778840

Apart from the callousness of this Lorna Reith was obviously not aware of the research that shows links between loneliness and ill health http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12324231

The provision of facilities for combatting loneliness and isolation is now being picked up by charities and is also being funded by Big Lottery Fund grants for "good causes"

A befriending scheme for older people has been launched in Wales with funding from the Lottery http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-west-wales-17182398

And another in Northern Ireland http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-18065506

As we like maps there's also a link to a map of loneliness across the UK here:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7754861.stm

Rate Your Hospital?

The NHS is planning to introduce a new system to allow patients to rate their hospitals.  BBC News are asking for comments about these plans http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18198383

We've been tracking hospital infection counts for the last two years and these can be seen on our Hospital Map page http://www.carehomemap.co.uk/Hospitals.aspx

A recent article in The Independent says that one in sixteen people (6.4 percent) admitted to hospital contracted a super-bug infection.  This is an improvement on the 8.2 percent rate that was recorded at the last survey in 2006.

Full article is here http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/new-challenges-as-survey-shows-hospitals-can-leave-you-feeling-worse-7778653.html

The full report from the Health Protection Agency is here http://www.hpa.org.uk/NewsCentre/NationalPressReleases/2012PressReleases/120523Snapshotsurveyhcai/

CareHomeMap Regions

After a gap of almost 2 years we have now been able to start showing a map of care quality across the whole of England again. 

The Regions page of CareHomeMap www.carehomemap.co.uk/regions.aspx had not been updated since July 2010 due to changes in the way that Care Quality Commission (CQC) has been reporting the results of inspections and due to lack of information about the geographic region that a carehome is in.

After a fair amount of manual work and some deep data mining the Regions page is now displaying information up to end of April 2012.