For a person
There are many benefits of self care for people who live with a long term condition, illness or disability, as well as carers. They can suffer less pain, anxiety, depression and fatigue, have a better quality of life, be more active and independent and live longer.
For the adult social care sector
As well as giving individuals the power to make their own choices and decisions there are other benefits for adult social care.
- Self care is based on person-centred care, respect, dignity, choice and independence. If your organisation provides care, self care can help promote and develop quality care and support.
- Self care allows people to think differently about how care is provided. If you commission services, lead service or workforce development, self care encourages innovation and supports the move to more integrated care and support.
Self neglect is a behavioural condition in which a person neglects their basic needs such as personal hygiene and eating. There are three main forms of self neglect:
- Lack of self-care - this includes neglect of someone’s personal hygiene, nutrition and hydration, or health, to an extent that may endanger safety or well-being.
- Lack of care of a person's environment - this includes situations that may lead to domestic squalor or increased risk in the domestic environment.
- Refusal of services - this might include refusal of care services in either their home or a care environment or of health assessments or interventions, even if previously agreed, which could potentially improve self-care or care of a person's environment.
We are exploring how self-neglect can impact on people’s care and support needs and how the workforce has to adapt to meet the challenges that self-neglect can present.
The scoping study of workforce development for self-neglect work looks at how you can develop your staff who might face challenges relating to self-neglect.
Providing real choice and control for people means supporting them to take the risks they choose, particularly in the use of self-directed support and personal budgets.
We have developed several resources for you to use to support the learning and development of your staff to help them to balance risk enablement with their professional duty of care and to take a person-centred approach to risk.
We have developed ‘learning to live with risk’ guides to help you develop an appropriate risk policy that will be the cornerstone for supporting both staff and people who need care and support.
Learning to live with risk - a short guide
Learning to live with risk - an introduction
Learning to live with risk - guide presentation
Learning to live with risk - good practice scenarios
We have also developed ‘Keeping risks person centred’ guides to help people and those who care about them most think in positive and productive ways about how to ensure that they can achieve the changes they want to see, while keeping the issue of risk in its place.
Keeping risk person centred - introduction
Keeping risk person centred - presentation
Handouts to support the presentation
Keeping risk person centred - planning process
Keeping risk person centred - assessing risk
Keeping risk person centred - risk assessment
Six personalised safeguarding responses
Practice scenarios for discussion
Learning and development should focus on the practical skills workers need to do their job but also keeping the values they need to put them in practice.
A key part of selecting the right learning package for your organisation is finding the right learning provider.
Find our endorsed providers
Our Endorsement Framework finds and badges learning providers who can show high quality learning and development to the social care sector.
You can search for our endorsed providers in our online directory.