Quality & Governance
We aim to uphold standards and practices that produce the best level of care for each resident in our care facilities. Maintaining a good level of training and quality assurance measures to better the lives of those who provide & receive care.
Why Maintaining Quality Matters?
Service users and their families are firmly at the centre of all that we do at Glenholme. We understand that overseeing continuous quality assurance is everybody’s responsibility, so we create an environment where excellence in care will flourish. All staff are encouraged to work cooperatively with management to achieve good governance. We have a Quality and Governance structure for the safe operation of the business, ensuring that feedback is duly considered and acted upon as appropriate. Our Head of Clinical and Quality Delivery, holds overall responsibility for ensuring that our organisation is up to date with relevant legislation, sources of legislative updates and best practice guidelines.
Standards & Practices
Senior Leadership Meetings: Clinical, operational and senior management meetings are scheduled with standardised agendas focusing on continuing improvement of quality, safety, innovation and governance. This can include a wide range of topics including safeguarding, health and safety, risk registers, policy and procedure updates, and accidents/incidents to name a few.
Policy & Procedures Accessibility: Having our policies and procedures available to all our staff allows for conversations, reviewing and discussing risks in an open manner. This ensures that they are protected from harm and any identified risks are escalated to the highest level for appropriate management.
Attitudes & Approaches to Incidents: Our culture and attitudes towards incidents are that of openness and transparency. All staff attend inductions where topics of reporting, raising and identifying concerns are discussed, this includes whistleblowing (Freedom to Speak Out) and near misses. We record all information relating to incidents, and these are tracked until investigations and learning outcomes are completed, closed, appropriately shared and regularly reviewed. Information regarding learning is discussed with individual members involved in the incident and also filtered down to the rest of the organisation.
Audits and Self-Assessments: Regularly scheduled audits and self-assessments ensure our continuous service improvement and service user experience. The audits are conducted using NICE (National Institution for Health and Care Excellence) templates as a resource and the learning outcomes are reviewed collaboratively. After these audits, we publicly release action points to implement any agreed improvements to our provision. All noted improvements are dealt with accordingly to improve our service user experience, maintain safety and enhance quality of life. Having a reoccurring process such as this, also helps us respond to internal and external stakeholders.
Training
We aim to provide the best care for our service users and provide opportunities and the facilities for training to equip our staff. Ensuring that our staff are in possession of the knowledge, skills and experience necessary to perform their jobs to the highest standard is our priority. All staff members can expect their individual training needs to be discussed in their supervision sessions and annual appraisals.
How We Equip Our Staff
- Induction training to make sure that all staff who are new can work safely.
- Opportunities for staff and managers to achieve relevant vocational qualifications (Diplomas/Certificates in Health and Social Care and awards within the National Qualifications Framework).
- Ongoing professional development training programmes for staff to maintain and develop their skills and satisfy any professional registration requirements.
- Rolling programmes of statutory and mandatory training, including essential health and safety training, safeguarding, basic life support and moving and handling.
- Training programmes for staff in all aspects of care relevant to their job roles such as additional awareness training for learning disabilities, mental health, epilepsy and diabetes.
Glenholme provides staff members with the opportunity to study for NVQ qualifications through a government-funded apprenticeship with an accredited provider. The courses can take up to 2 years to complete and involve monthly review meetings with an assessor, recording off-the-job training, assignments, and practical observations. Although this is not mandatory, we do actively encourage (subject to eligibility criteria) all workers to gain these further qualifications.