In a series of interviews with the regional co-chairs of the Social Care Nursing Advisory Councils (SCNACs) Madeleine Anderson looks at the priorities of each council and how the co-chairs are promoting social care nursing in their local area.
In this second interview, she hears from the co-chairs of the North East and Yorkshire Council, whose regional priorities are delegating healthcare tasks and promoting the frontline social care nursing voice and belonging.
The co-chairs
The North East and Yorkshire SCNAC is chaired by Anthony Birmingham and Karen Roberts. Mr Birmingham is a registered learning disability nurse (RNLD) who currently manages learning disability nursing care across multiple services.
Ms Roberts is also an RNLD and a Queen’s Nurse who has worked in social care nursing for almost three decades. She is group head of health and clinical governance quality at Lifeways Group, which provides supporting living arrangements for adults across the UK.
Priority 1: Delegated healthcare tasks
The NE and Yorkshire SCNAC is currently changing how it delegates healthcare tasks, to help relieve pressures on NHS nursing staff.
The Council is supporting non-nursing care professionals, such as care support workers, to take on some responsibilities or organise some tasks that are typically completed by a nurse, such as insulin management, wound management or stoma care.
The co-chairs say their background in disability nursing has inspired them to reduce waiting times for patients and residents, who can enjoy greater freedom and less anxiety when they receiver quicker care access.
‘There’s a real impact of having to wait in for someone to your care, as you’ve either got to wait for the nurse to arrive or return home early because the nurse is coming to visit.
‘The impact on people’s quality of life is quite significant, alongside putting pressure on NHS colleagues,’ Ms Roberts told Nursing in Practice.
The initiative sees support workers being trained by local district nursing teams to ensure staff are competent to deliver a range of tasks.
Across the region, nurses have been employed specifically to oversee this delegated healthcare activity training. Accountability has been a significant focus for the work.
‘It’s very clear at what point a support worker needs to seek medical advice or to go back to the district nurse.
‘So, the accountability remains with the district nursing teams as it’s down to them to make sure the staff are trained,’ Ms Roberts explained.
The task delegation helps shift pressures from NHS staff, such as district nursing teams, but accountability remains with the health professional who is overseeing the care that is being provided, such as a nurse, physiotherapist, or occupational therapist.
Alongside reducing pressures on NHS staff, the co-chairs believe improving role delegation ensures more continuity of care for patients, who then benefit from more consistent access to familiar care professionals who deliver their more minor care processes day to day.
‘It’s better for them because they’re having their care undertaken by people they know, their support workers, rather than somebody different who may be unfamiliar,’ Ms Roberts explained.
This is especially significant for patients with autism or behavioural difficulties, who can find it ‘really unsettling’ to have variation in the people they receive care from, she added.
The co-chair admitted that the work to implement the plan had been ‘patchy’, but said the scheme had been very successful when implemented well.
‘Where it works well the feedback has been really positive from the individual whose receiving that care and support but also from the staff perspective.
‘For the district nurses it’s freeing up this caseload which has some real benefits,’ she said.
Going forward, the SCNAC is looking to work with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and Care England to see how social care task delegation could be improved across the UK as a whole.
‘We’re looking at how we can get this priority better embedded across social care, but it’s not going to be a quick fix,’ Ms Roberts explained.
Priority 2: Frontline social care nursing voice and belonging
Recognising the frontline role that social care nurses play in delivering support and leading services, the SCNAC is working to ‘prioritise their voice’ across the region, particularly around strategic and development roles.
Mr Birmingham said that there is appetite from social care nurses to take on such roles but added that it ‘hasn’t been easy’ to put the priority into action.
‘The nurses are on shift and focused on the day-to-day challenges of thee role, so it can be a challenge to get frontline staff involved,’ he told Nursing in Practice.
Mr Birmingham said work is needed to support social care nurses ‘to feel that sense of being part of a bigger collective,’ like NHS nurses often do.
‘Everyone is equal as a nurse, and I think people need to see and feel that,’ he said.
The co-chair stressed that ‘misconceptions remain’ around what social care nurses do and how the role can be used to support potentially vulnerable people.
He warned: ‘The value that a nurse brings within the social care environment is absolutely massive, but that typically wouldn’t be thought of as a nursing role, or the stereotypical nursing role, and I think that’s a big challenge.’
Earlier this month, the government announced that the NHS funding given to care homes to provide nursing care will increase by 7.7%.
Also this month, a report from the King’s Fund found that unfunded costs such as staffing have led to fewer people receiving publicly funded social care.
Launched in 2023, there are seven social care nursing advisory councils across England. Each has two regional priorities to work towards to improve social care as a whole across the country.
