Simon Osborne, Director of Quality, ‘In Home’ and Clinical Care, Right at Home
Leadership, to me, is about communicating clearly and working collaboratively to help drive positive change.
As Director of Quality and Clinical Care at Right at Home, my work alongside our wonderful Clinical Care Lead Lisa Grainger, guiding the provision of clinical care in people’s own homes has arguably never felt more important.
There continues to be huge pressure on the acute sector caused by delayed transfers of care, amongst many other sector-wide challenges, which I am especially mindful of in my approach to clinical leadership.
I therefore strive not only to communicate the vision of where we want to be, but also a clear path to get there and how we will continue to make a positive difference for our Clients, CareGivers and franchisees.
Once our vision and overall goals are agreed – and that’s a collaborative approach in itself – I take a clear and measured approach to developing how we will achieve these goals, both with my team, individual Franchise Owners and Registered Managers.
Inclusive leadership is critical because the objective is to involve those who are delivering a project from the start and take them on a journey with you. I listen very actively to what all stakeholders tell me, and I truly value their opinions and views.
To successfully lead a workforce in this sector it is vital to stay informed and up to date with what is happening across the wider health and social care landscape. It’s all very well looking to the future, but one must also have an in-depth understanding of the work of different parts of the sector, the intricacies, and how these link and impact each other.
Our biggest focus when planning for the future is always the people we care for. I start by identifying how and why a project or initiative would benefit our Clients specifically, because person-centred care is at the core of everything we do at Right at Home.
I then also think about how we can empower our CareGivers to undertake additional training, which both supports career development and benefits our Clients.
We’re currently providing delegated healthcare activities training through our new Clinical Care Project, enabling our CareGivers to deliver personalised clinical care to Clients, which is proving to be very successful.
The long-term goals of the NHS and the Department of Health and Social Care are to move much greater levels of complex care out of hospitals and into the community. The problem is, there is a general lack of capacity within the community sector to provide the right care, in the right place, at the right time.
This is compounded by a skills gap, as the domiciliary care workforce needs to acquire additional clinical skills to be able to meet the needs of an increasing number of people with long-term chronic conditions, and that’s what we’re addressing at Right at Home.
Enhancing the clinical offering in domiciliary care will also help address the issues regarding delayed transfers of care from acute-sector hospitals, by helping to speed up the discharge process. By prioritising this preventative care, it can also help reduce the number of hospital admissions in the first place.
Our Clinical Care Project has immense social value as it is helping people be cared for in their own homes for longer. This is vital as over the years we have seen Clients eventually have to be admitted to a specialist care setting because of increasing complex health-related needs.
So, my personal objective with this project is to help slow down that process through the delivery of consistent person-centred care.
The project is developmental – we have started with the most common clinical areas, which are urinary catheter care, bowel stoma care and Gastronomy/PEG care.
So far, we’ve trained 48 CareGivers in Gastronomy/PEG care, 150 in urinary catheter care and 93 in bowel stoma care.
As the project progresses, in years two and three we will expand these areas with other healthcare activities, including diabetes management.
Our Clinical Care will help to slow, if not prevent, further decline, which will make a huge difference to the lives of a significant portion of our highly-valued Clients.
