Nottinghamshire Dignity Champions
Nottinghamshire County Council
Cllr. Alan Rhodes, Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care & Health
Linda Bayliss, Strategic Services Director
Linda Bayliss is available for interviews on 0115 977 4610.
The authority has appointed two Dignity Champions - Councillor Alan Rhodes and Linda Bayliss, Strategic Services Director.
A national campaign was launched by Ivan Lewis to place dignity and respect at the heart of caring for people. Whilst this challenge was initially aimed at older people and was entitled Dignity in Care, the Adult Social Care and Health Department have taken on the challenge to mean dignity and respect for all services they either provide or commission from the independent sectors.
The department held its Dignity Challenge event on Tuesday 4 December 2007 at Newark Showground, as part of its work to place dignity and respect at the heart of caring for people and to support the CSCI key lines of assessment to standards of performance outcome 7, maintaining personal dignity and respect. The purpose of the event was to increase awareness and understanding of the dignity challenge, explore in more detail with those present what is meant by dignity, to share examples of good practice and to recruit dignity champions.
One hundred and fifty staff attended from providers of residential, day care and home care services; independent sector providers of care (residential, nursing, day and home care and supported living); providers of supporting people services and health partners as providers of care.
The event featured a number of workshops, presentations on dignity from different perspectives and exhibition stands. They demonstrated, how, for example, our Learning and Development Unit provided training and learning events which incorporate the dignity challenge and how choice was an essential element of our meals service.
The workshops involved an exchange of good practice on an inter-agency basis, along with discussions on how dignity should be monitored. Further examples included experiential training, individual care planning, reviewing and responding to feedback from service users and carers and quality surveys. Person centred and individualised care planning came across as strong examples of good practice in a variety of settings.
The event was a success and many people signed up to become dignity champions.