CARE HOME ‘TOOK ACTION TO CURB INFECTION’ SAYS OWNER
Concerns triggered targeted inspection
A CARE home owner today stressed that action had been taken to help curb infections after concerns triggered an inspection.
Morgan House in Uttoxeter Road, Blythe Bridge, caters for adults with learning disabilities or autism.
A Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspector visited in November after receiving information about ‘poor infection prevention control practices’.
The home itself had also alerted the watchdog to two residents having coronavirus.
Now a CQC report has revealed that not all staff had received training in dealing with infections when they started work there. A quarterly infection control audit had also not been completed since April 2020.
The report added: “No staff had renewed their infection control training renewed since the outbreak of Covid-19 in the home.
“The home was undergoing a deep cleaning following confirmed Covid-19 cases. The provider completed a daily walk around the infection control checklist, which included a two to three-hour surface wipe down procedure.
“We were not always assured that that the provider was making sure infection outbreaks could be effectively prevented or managed.”
But the inspector noted the home was ‘clean and tidy’ and was promoting hygiene practices, meeting shielding and social distancing rules, and using personal protective equipment effectively.
Staff and people using the service also had access to testing.
The CQC’S ‘targeted’ visit did not include issuing a rating for Morgan House as it was not a full inspection. The home was registered in 2019 and had not previously been inspected. It is run by Cygnet Learning Disabilities Midlands Ltd.
A Cygnet Morgan House spokesman said: “We take the safety and wellbeing of service users and staff extremely seriously and this is reflected in the positive findings of the latest CQC inspection.
“Two services users were affected by Covid-19 shortly before the inspection and, in line with our responsibilities, we notified the CQC. Fortunately, both had mild symptoms and did not need hospital admission.
“Throughout, we followed all Public Health England guidance to effectively manage the infection, and there are no current coronavirus cases.
“All staff have completed Cygnet’s infection control training and refresher infection control as appropriate; and we have been able to provide assurance to the CQC accordingly.
“We continue to enforce our strict rules around the use of PPE and follow all public health guidance.”
IN The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells wrote the odds of anyone coming from Mars were a million-to-one. Back in 1897, when Wells wrote his ground-breaking science fiction novel, I guess the odds of man successfully landing a small rover on the red planet would have been similar, but last week, that’s what happened.
NASA subsequently shared some stunning photography and film footage with the world – we now know what sunrise on Mars looks like – and their Mars 2020 mission can be said to be another giant step for mankind.
And it was also a giant step for ceramics here in Stoke-on-trent, for colour standards developed by materials technology experts Lucideon are helping to ensure that the colours captured on Mars are recorded accurately.
As Sentinel Business revealed yesterday these were developed as ceramic tiles at Lucideon’s base in Penkhull, and designed to fit with the equipment being used on the Mars mission. It’s an incredible achievement.
That footage from almost 40million miles away represents another great moment for ceramics and our city, shines a light on the more diversified industry that ceramics has become over the years, and also provides a pointer towards the future.
Lucideon have a strong track record of collaboration with partners in both the private and public sector, and their work will become increasingly important to the economic future of Stoke-on-trent.
However, although the work being done is extremely positive for our city and our industry, it may well be a long time until it touches the lives of ordinary people. Bruce Springsteen said, ‘nobody wins unless we all win’, and as the work of the Stokeon-trent Hardship Commission has demonstrated, a large proportion of the city’s residents live in extreme poverty, in terms of income, opportunity, and health inequalities. Given that we are living in a capitalist society, this is a failure of capitalism writ large.
In her latest book Mission Economy, economist Mariana Mazzucato talks of modern capitalism being in a rut, even before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and that it has no answers to the big challenges that we face.
She argues that the role and capacity of the state within society and the economy needs to be re-evaluated, and that its ‘sense of public purpose’ needs to be rediscovered.
In practical terms this would mean the state moving away from simply concerning itself with ‘fixing’ market failures and towards a more positive and proactive mindset where it would actively ‘shape and co-create markets and economies’.
Mazzucato identifies seven principles for the creation of a ‘new political economy’:
■ Value should be collectively created;
■ The state should shape markets, and not just fix them;
■ Organisations must have dynamic capabilities;
■ Finance and funding should be provided on the basis of outcomes;
■ Risk and reward should be shared;
■ The state and the private sector should collaborate in line with a genuine partnership approach;
■ And there should be an open approach to systems development in order to co-design the future.
She also identifies three key missions for our times:
■ A Green New Deal;
■ Innovating for accessible health;
■ Narrowing the digital divide. What Mazzucato describes is where Stoke-on-trent finds itself as a city - a place where capitalism alone does not have the answers to the big questions. Here, the hidden hand of the market remains in hiding.
It feels like we are standing at a crossroads in our city’s history, and ahead of us we have a host of social, environmental and economic challenges, the response to which will define whether or not we can say whether our city is a success or not.
We should be judged on reducing the number of households living in poverty, the narrowing of health inequalities, and the creation of opportunity for all.
But we cannot tackle these challenges with the same thinking that has created them in the first place, and we cannot tackle them with the same thinking that is continuing to fail. It is clear that things have to change.
Perhaps the challenges that Stokeon-trent faces ought to be seen as missions led by local government, and by developing an understanding of what Mazzucato’s principles for the creation of a new political economy here in the Potteries, perhaps they will have a chance of tackling them.