Guidance Notes and Best Practice Guides
CRC: The Commission for Rural Communities has produced a ‘refreshed & strengthened’ Rural Proofing Toolkit to help policymakers ensure policies take account of rural circumstances & needs and which:
* builds on learning from use of the previous model
* includes more specific practical advice concerning the needs of rural areas
* emphasises that ‘sparsity’ & ‘rurality’ are essential considerations of good policy making
* highlights examples of effective rural proofing within government
Press release ~ Rural Proofing Toolkit ~ CRC - Rural Proofing ~ Rural Proofing conference (19 May 2009) ~
ScotGov: Women with low-risk pregnancies are to be offered more choice & control over giving birth, as a result of new guidelines for Scotland. The Keeping Childbirth Natural and Dynamic (KCND) guidance for doctors and midwives is intended to ensure midwives are the lead carers for women who have safe, low-risk pregnancies and births - the majority of women giving birth in Scotland.
The KCND clinical guidelines have been prepared by NHS Quality Improvement Scotland. In addition to the guidance for maternity care professionals, NHS Health Scotland have been asked to produce information for patients to ensure pregnant women remain as well-informed as possible about their care.
Press release ~ Keeping Childbirth Natural and Dynamic (KCND) programme ~ Guidance on key objectives for NHS Boards ~ NHS Quality Improvement Scotland ~ NHS Health Scotland ~ Scottish Multi-professional Maternity Development Programme ~ More about the Pathway for Normal Maternity Care
ScotGov: Every teacher in Scotland will (this week) receive their own personal copy of the guidelines for Curriculum for Excellence - Experiences and Outcomes. Scotland's new approach to learning & teaching is intended to bring about change in the classroom and will be fully implemented from August 2010.
The new approach puts literacy & numeracy at its heart, with all teachers equally responsible for teaching and an emphasis on cross-curricular teaching. The teaching guidance outlines from the perspective of a child or young person what they expect to have learned at appropriate stages in their education.
CLG: All new homes will feature inbuilt protection from hot water scalding in baths and will use water more efficiently under measures announced last week. From October 2009 all new build homes will have protective devices fitted to baths to limit hot water temperature and will need to meet a new minimum standard of 125 litres of water per person per day to improve water efficiency.
In addition, the government have published the Water Efficiency Calculator for New Dwellings that will be used to estimate water usage for the purposes of both Part G (sanitation, hot water safety and water efficiency) of the Building Regulations (amendments to which were laid before Parliament last week) and for the Code for Sustainable Homes.
Press release ~
DH: More than 200 indicators of high quality care in the NHS has been published by the Department of Health and The NHS Information Centre to help clinicians drive up the quality of care they deliver to patients.
The Indicators for Quality Improvement will help measure the quality of care clinicians deliver, highlight areas for improvement and track the changes they implement. They span the three dimensions of high quality care: patient safety, effectiveness of care and patient experience.
At this stage, the aim is to enable clinicians to fully understand the indicators, their methodology and source. Within the next few months, DH will publish data that will enable local clinical teams to compare themselves with others as the basis for local quality improvement. Over the next 3 to 5 years the list will be further developed to improve depth of coverage across all care pathways and quality dimensions.
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