Praise for improved Lothian care

An event on Friday 20 May 2016 celebrated improvements in care for Lothian care home residents and those who receive care in their own homes thanks to a new Marie Curie palliative training programme for Lothian social care teams. 

The Lothian Care Assistant Development Programme is already benefitting people living with a terminal illness locally in their own homes and in City of Edinburgh Council, East Lothian Council, Midlothian Council and West Lothian Council care homes. This has helped avoid unnecessary hospital admissions and people are receiving the best quality care and support no matter where they are looked after.

Over 360 social care staff have been trained to date, enabling people to receive palliative and end of life care and to die in their place of choice, such as their care home or home.
The training is one of the projects from the Lothian Palliative Care Redesign Programme, a Marie Curie collaboration with all four local authorities and various education providers in Lothian. The online and one day face-to-face training is improving confidence, knowledge and skills of local authority care home and home care staff. It also provides mentor support from Marie Curie health and social care professionals.

74 staff from Crookston Care Home owned and run by East Lothian Council have already completed the one day training with 16 enrolled for the online programme. Other local authority Care Homes in East Lothian in addition to the Council Home Care service have also participated in this initiative. The Home Care service were the first in the whole region to mentor a candidate through the online course.

East Lothian IJB Chairperson Councillor Donald Grant says: 

First of all, I would like to congratulate everyone who achieved this award and thank them for their hard work and dedication.

We are delighted to have teamed up with Marie Curie to secure this training. Partnership working brings great benefits in terms of building our skills. Sensitive and thoughtful support makes such a big difference and this training will have a really positive impact in the work we do in supporting people with a terminal illness and their families and friends.

Following the official programme launch event at the Marie Curie Hospice, Edinburgh Lyndsay Cassidy Marie Curie Programme Manager said:

The benefit of this programme to local families living with terminal illness are already being felt which is heartening to see. Marie Curie has been campaigning for everyone in the healthcare of people with a terminal illness to undertake practice-based palliative care training as part of their continuing professional development. We are pleased that the Scottish Government has committed to this in their Framework for Action on Palliative and End of Life Care. By building the confidence and skills of health and social care teams we are seeing health and social care integration at its best and most effective.

Health and social care professionals interested in finding out more about the training can email Lothian.Training@mariecurie.org.uk or call 0131 561 3944.