Dementia community of practice for Covid-19 and beyond

By Gareth Hammond, Service Manager

At the onset of the pandemic, it became clear the focus of care and support was shifting to one of risk mitigation, underpinned by clinical outcomes based on a medical model of delivery. Decisions were taken to keep people safe, and rightly so. However, isolation now became the norm for many people.

As I have worked in social care for most of my career, from care assistant to dementia specialist nurse before joining the Care Inspectorate, I was acutely aware that what was happening across the sector could compromise outcomes for people living with dementia.

A co-ordinated approach to shared inspection for ELC

We have been working with Education Scotland on a coordinated approach to shared inspection activity in early learning and childcare settings providing funded ELC. Before beginning the programme of inspections for 2022/23, we have written a letter for services to clarify what each inspection focuses on and the shared inspection process: for the Care Inspectorate, the focus is quality of care and learning; for Education Scotland it is quality of education.

Our letter to providers is available here.