I've been making a few improvements to the way The Care Guy operates.

First - the podcast is now available on itunes. Just go to the itunes store and search 'The Care Guy' or 'The Care Guy show' and you can download the whole lot for free.

Second - The Care Guy is running a special offer for December 2012 and January 2013. If you book training to be delivered anywhere in UK during either of those months you'll get a massive 40% discount. That' means you'll save a full £200 per day with no hidden expenses. What you see is what you get.

So if you'd like to have first rate training delivered to your staff for only £300 per day give me a call.

You can see more about my training services here.

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Course outline

Hanged if you do – hanged if you don’t

One of the biggest headaches for health and social care workers is how to make sense of their duty of care. On the one hand we’re told that we must take steps to ensure safety and on the other hand we need to respect people’s rights to make their own decisions, even if they’re risky. This can be a delicate balance to strike and the dilemmas in practice are familiar to all care workers and managers.

Unfortunately this results in increased stress, burnout, sickness and staff turnover. It leads to an expensive drop in morale where even the strongest workers become disillusioned as they cover for absent colleagues or wait while their managers go through the costly and time-consuming business of recruitment. From first advertisement and interview to CRB checks and the eventual appointment of new workers takes time.

And yet it doesn’t have to be this way. It’s true that the law can be complicated and expensive. Highly trained barristers can take many months getting to the bottom of fine points of legislation but care workers aren’t expected to have that level of understanding. We’re expected to understand the basic principles of care law, to know what to do if we’re unsure and to act reasonably. We don’t even need to get it right every time. We only need to have been reasonable.

This one or two day course is designed for those workers who are far too busy delivering care to spend their time reading through long reports of legal precedent. It covers the basic points we all need to be safe ‘at the coal face’ of care delivery in a practical, work based way that is both engaging and understandable.

Delivered in plain English by an experienced nurse and trainer, the basic message of ‘Hanged if you do & hanged if you don’t’ is ‘calm down’. This is nowhere near so complicated as many care workers fear. By taking the mystery and complicated jargon out of the equation we guide workers step by step from basic principles to a solid understanding of duty of care. Real life stories and clear examples are used throughout to make the training both absorbing and easy to apply in practice. This course not only helps workers to relax, it cuts sickness, burnout and recruitment costs as well.

The course covers:

• The duty of care myth
• What are rights?
• The right to be protected
• Balancing rights and responsibilities
• We’re not expected to save the world
• Common law and necessity
• Being reasonable
• Team working
• Safeguarding
• Mental capacity and the right to decide
• Risks and responsibilities
• Acting in best interests
• Being reasonable
• Documentation
• Not being hanged

Contact The Care Guy on 07872 102626 for more information or fill in the contact form here

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Contact The Care Guy on 07872 102626 or Email info@thecareguy.com for further details.

Alternatively use the contact form here

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My newest project is a blatant rip off. The materials are my own but the format is very definitely inspired by two bloggers and tweeters whom I admire so much I intend to emulate them. They do say (whoever ‘they’ might be) that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Recently Twitter’s excellent @nurse_w_glasses who is responsible for the immensely popular 20 commandments for mental health workers and the ’20 commandments’ blog has seen her 1 page summary of the commandments posted in nurses’ stations all across the globe. It’s such a good format.

Even more recently a Leicestershire police inspector @MentalHealthCop who hosts his own extremely popular blog has begun posting ‘quick guides’ for serving police officers who may need fast access to pithy information as situations arise.

My project is based upon a combination of both these ideas. I plan to create relatively brief ‘quick guide’ summaries of mental health and social care principles that can either be used for quick online reference (like Mental Health Cop’s guides) or posted in staff rooms and offices (like Margreeth’s 20 commandments). I’m essentially ripping off two basic formats to create my own hybrid. Fortunately neither Margreeth nor Mental Health Cop seem to object. After all – we’re all chasing the same thing – information getting ‘out there’ to the people on the front line.

So my first offering in this series is a single page summary of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 for front line workers in England & Wales.

You can download it here: MCA 1 page summary

Feel free to print it off and post it in the office, nurses’ station or keep it in your bag for quick reference should you need it.

You can also download my longer PDF that explains the Mental Capacity Act in more detail if you fancy something a bit more meaty

The Mental Capacity Act does not allow us to intervene in every decision. Knowing when we can and cannot get involved may seem complicated but it doesn't need to be. There are essentially three types of decision-making situations. Knowing how to tell the difference between them is the key.