In the News

DHHands up those of you that remember State Enrolled Nurses (SENs), who could progress to become SRNs! - All healthcare assistants & social care support workers should undergo the same basic training, based on the best practice that already exists in the system and must get a standard ‘Certificate of Fundamental Care’ before they can care for people unsupervised, according to a new independent report published last week.

The independent Cavendish Review, carried out in the wake of the Francis Inquiry into Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, makes a number of recommendations on how the training & support of healthcare assistants who work in hospitals & social care support workers who are employed in care homes and people’s own homes can be strengthened to ensure they provide care to the highest standard.  The review finds that the quality of training & support that care workers receive in the NHS and social care system currently varies between organisations.

The recommendations it makes include:
* Common training standards across health & social care, along with a new ‘Certificate of Fundamental Care’
*The opportunity for talented care workers to progress into nursing & social care through the creation of a ‘Higher Certificate of Fundamental Care’
* The NMC should make caring experience a prerequisite to starting a nursing degree and review the contribution of vocational experience towards degrees
Press release & links ~ Independent Cavendish Review ~ £10m for more nurses in Wales ~ DH: New era of education & training for NHS staff ~ RCN welcomes Willis Commission recommendations ~ Minister unveils state-of-the-art learning technology for student nurses & midwives ~ NHS Confederation comments on RCN survey on bureaucracy ~ NICE: Poor drip care putting patients' lives at risk ~ WAG: Audit shows patient experience continues to improve ~ NHS Confederation - Nurses are a vital cornerstone of community health care, says community health forum ~ Putting Patients First: government publishes response to Francis Report ~ NHS Confed: System-wide change with more care out of hospitals needed to meet challenges facing the NHS ~ ScotGov: Nursing staffing levels ~ Patients Association - Complaint handling in NHS Trusts ~ CQC launch 'State of Care' report 2012  ~ CQC: State of Care 2012 ~ Acute hospital care could be on the brink of collapse, warns RCP ~ NICE calls for standardised model of bedside monitoring ~ RCN:  Bring back State Enrolled Nurses? ~ CQC:  Another rotten apple in the NHS barrel?

DECCCan the ‘poor’ afford the government’s green policies? - Following an independent review and a consultation a new definition of fuel poverty has been set out to ensure support is targeted at those who need it most.   

A household will be defined as ‘fuel poor’ if its:
* Total income is below the poverty line (taking into account energy costs)
* Energy costs are higher than typical

The decision to adopt a new definition follows a consultation and an independent review of the current definition by Professor John Hills of the London School of Economics (LSE), published in March 2012.  The current definition of a ‘fuel poor household’ is that a household would need to spend 10% of their income on energy a year.

Government has introduced amendments to the Energy Bill to set a new target for fuel poverty.  It is proposed that this will focus on ensuring that fuel poor households attain a certain standard of energy efficiency in their home by defining an average or a minimum standard for energy efficiency for fuel poor households.
Press release ~ Read the Framework for Action document ~ Government response to the consultation ~ The Hills Review ~ Energy Bill ~ Warm Homes & Energy Conservation Act ~ JRF: Time to reconsider UK energy and fuel poverty policies? ~ Energy UK: Fuel Poverty ~ Fuel Poverty Indicator ~ CAB - Millions will be condemned to fuel poverty without stronger Government action ~ ScotGov: Savings on home energy bills ~ Warm Homes Fund launched ~ Millions for warmer homes ~ 540 Welsh homes to be more energy efficient ~ DECC: £46m boost for 132 local energy schemes ~ IPPR: Energy tax will hit business & undermine European effort to tackle climate change ~ IPPR: New energy efficiency scheme will leave 2m fuel poor households out in the cold ~ CCC: Energy prices & bills – impacts of meeting carbon budgets ~ CCC assesses energy bill impacts claimed by TaxPayers’ Alliance and Liberum Capital ~ TUC: Insulating the homes of the UK's poorest would boost growth ~ BIG: £12m lifeline for vulnerable facing fuel & food poverty ~ NIA: Collaboration is Key to Reducing Fuel Poverty Says Assembly Committee

CCCTimely report as we ‘suffer’ our first taste of forecasted future Mediterranean summers - Climate change presents a risk to the supply of important goods & services from the land, says a new report published by the Government’s advisers on climate change adaptation.  Without action this could undermine our ability to meet increased food demand over the next decades.

The report reviews key ecosystem services provided by the land, specifically, supplying food & timber, providing habitats for wildlife, storing carbon in the soil and coping with sea level rise on the coast. The report finds there has been very limited progress addressing risks from climate change and highlights where further action is needed.
Press release ~ Managing the land in a changing climate – Adaptation Sub-Committee progress report 2013 ~ Land-use & Forestry factsheet ~ Agriculture factsheet ~ BIS: Foresight published projects ~ DFID:  Access to & control of resources is what has been at the basis of conflicts for millennium (2nd item) ~ Newswire – Oxfam:  If there isn’t enough food & water everything else is irrelevant (3rd item)

HO:  Trying not to ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’ - The Home Secretary has announced that the UK will opt out of EU policing & criminal justice measures adopted before the Lisbon Treaty came into force.  Theresa May confirmed in a statement to Parliament that the government will seek to rejoin only those measures which help the UK co-operate with its European neighbours to combat cross-border crime and keep our country safe.

One of these is the European Arrest Warrant (EAW), on which the Home Secretary has proposed significant additional safeguards for those subject to extradition requests, which include:
* Amending the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime & Policing Bill to ensure an arrest warrant can be refused for minor crimes
* Using the European Investigation Order instead of the EAW so that police forces & prosecutors share evidence without requiring the extradition of a suspect at the investigative stage
* Addressing lengthy & avoidable pre-trial detention by amending the UK Extradition Act
Press release & links

OFTGuaranteed to give better value! - The UK's first extended warranties (EW) price comparison website has been launched following action by the OFT. The new website will hopefully make it much easier to shop around & compare extended warranties for a wide range of domestic electrical goods.  With providers on the site covering around 75% of UK extended warranty sales, shoppers will have improved information on the choice of deals at their fingertips, helping them to find the best deal.

Household names Argos and Dixons, 2 of the largest electrical retailers in the UK, are members of the site as part of legally enforceable undertakings agreed with the OFT, which were designed to address the competition problems identified in the market. 

Additional EW providers - Domestic & General, Warranty Direct, Tesco and Richer Sounds - have voluntarily signed up, giving consumers a wide variety of information to help them make an informed choice.
Press release & links ~ OFT acts to improve competition in extended warranties ~ MAS: Extended warranties – are they worth it?
GLOBOSecuring Your Organisation's Enterprise Data in a BYOD World - Smartphones, tablets, and other personal devices are drastically changing the way public sector employees interact with enterprise applications and systems - bring-your-own-device (BYOD) enables productivity and collaboration. However, BYOD initiatives raise important concerns regarding application security, the protection of enterprise data, regulatory requirements and ICO compliance.
 
A brief, yet informative paper reviews the fundamentals of mobile security that so many organisations often overlook.

Topics covered include:

• Device security
• Proxy-based communications
• Data encryption

Also find out how the emergence of secure container based ‘Build Once, Deploy to ANY mobile’ technology is enabling rapid public sector deployment of secure mobile access to previously unavailable data.

Click here below to discover more.

 
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Spotlight on women at Serco – Anita’s story