CQC State of Care Report 2023
Staff Wellbeing and its impact on Care.
In its latest annual State of Care report published just days ago the CQC returns to its evaluation of Health and Social care across the country examining important aspects of care provision taken from service providers, staff, stakeholders, and people using services.
The report in its section dedicated to staff wellbeing identifies that the higher demands and expectations placed upon staff are leading to increased work pressures and is affecting the wellbeing of staff.
Sickness because of work-related stress, anxiety and depression remains high, generated to some extent by poor leadership, negative workplace cultures, low staffing levels, high turnover rates, increased physical and non-physical assaults on staff and increased clinical incidents.
Currently stress, anxiety, and depression accounts for over a quarter of all sickness absence in the Health and Social care sector.
Whilst this has undoubtedly been compounded by the cost-of-living crisis, dissatisfaction with pay, industrial action across various sectors and deteriorating morale, there are things that can and are being done to help reduce these issues.
Mental Health First Aid training has been considered ineffective in the past by some, largely because for organisations the training has to be the beginning of the journey rather than the end, it needs to be met with a common cause to recognise, prevent and alleviate the potential suffering of its most valued asset. The training needs to be coupled with realistic support plans, wellbeing programmes and investment in reducing factors that are causal to mental health concerns.
At Norfolk and East Suffolk Training we can assist organisations by completing the MHFA training, but beyond that we can be used to assist in planning, implementation, monitoring and review of well-being strategies and supportive initiatives so that outcomes can be measured, and organisations will see a return of this investment by seeing reducing sickness, reduced turnover, higher retention levels, greater staff engagement, higher morale and motivation.
At Norfolk and East Suffolk training we also have experience with restrictive interventions, physical intervention and breakaway training which could be used proportionately to increase staff confidence during times of conflict and reduce episodes of staff assaults.
Should you purely wish to consult on some of these issues and require external assistance to implement your own changes please do not hesitate to get in touch.
For those of you that don’t want to do any of this please consider the following:
Are you performing wellness assessment of staff?
Do you collect feedback and monitor data around staff wellbeing?
Are staff involved in considering wellbeing programmes or initiatives?
What do you have in place to promote psychological, social, emotional, and financial wellbeing?
Do you want to be considered a proactive or reactive organisation?