Department of Health: publish a regular Social Care Bulletin aimed at all social care staff, but probably most useful for Managers and strategic planners.

The bulletins are available by emailing them directly and contain lots of updates on changes, legislation, plus links to other informative sites and also news in brief of planned or ongoing social care initiatives.

Dorset Primary Care Trust: contains links to Dorset websites about activity, healthy eating, sexual health, mental health, National Health Services and general healthcare services.

Elder World: a site that has been designed for carers working in care/nursing homes - has lots of interactive visual aids, links to other sites and literature available on it free! Including a 30-minute online learning session on ‘An Introduction to Dementia’ and also one on ‘Managing Violence’ (for which we may prefer to read ‘Managing Challenging Behaviour’ perhaps!).

Food Standards Agency: have a great set of information sheets on – Nutrient Guidance for Care Homes, Food served to Older People in Care Homes, & Menus for Care Homes.

General Social Care Council: have copies of the social care ‘Codes of Practice’ in 30 languages. These can be downloaded free of charge from:

Help the Aged: now publishes a bulletin for Care Home staff entitled ‘My Home Life’. It contains lots of really useful free information and celebrates best practice in care homes. Issue 1 is on ‘Managing Transition (from home to care home) – and includes a benchmarking ‘rating your care practice’ quiz, which is a really good tool for raising staff awareness on how to ease the move. Also the top 10 tips, Issue 2 is ‘Maintaining Identity’ – how to help older people to feel positive about themselves and valued as individuals. Much of the information contained in this bulletin is not just applicable to older people. Download the bulletin free by clicking here.

Log On To Care: I’m sure that this Local Authority sponsored website won’t mind you tapping into their excellent resource entitled ‘Look at it This Way’! It is a 25 page booklet explaining the effects of visual impairment, and is a really useful tool that gives practical ideas for care/nursing home, day centre or care staff working with clients in their own homes to support people who have reduced or impaired vision (including examples of macular degeneration, cataract, diabetic retinopathy and tunnel vision which you can see on the computer screen). The website also includes lots of other useful online learning stuff, but I particularly liked this one with its’ useful hints and tips!

Motor Neurone Disease Association: have a really informative free information pack entitled ‘Personal Guide to Motor Neurone Disease’, which is available (free of charge) by telephoning 01604 611870, or emailing them directly. N.B. Make sure that you state that you are a health or social care professional when you are ordering this pack, as it is intended to be a modular pack for people newly diagnosed with MND - and those folk are sent modules as they order them, rather than in its’ entirety (due to the sensitive nature of the content). If you are a health/social care professional, you will be sent the whole pack for your/your team’s personal learning, but must commit to not sharing it with residents/patients/clients.

NHS: This page features a 48 page pack to download that contains case studies and ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ and responses that a variety of organisations have developed to solve common issues about learning disability workforce development matters. The pack also contains really useful resources and contact details to enable access to further information.

Open University: Is offering a number of free Health & Lifestyle units on its’ website. These units include: Care issues, diversity, relationships, and norms & values. The units are level 3+ to level 5 – eminently suitable for Managers wishing to pursue their Continuing Professional Development (CPD), but they also provide good discussion points and case studies to support in-house staff learning.

‘Our Say’ – a free of charge newsletter run by, and for, people with learning disabilities. 

Scils: as always, has lots of new individual and group learning sessions available, plus updates to its’ existing ones. If you haven’t yet registered to use this site, do contact your local Care Partnership lead/Learning Hub/Learning Exchange Network contact, or Learning & Development Local Authority Department, who will advise you of the password required in order to log on and access this free resource. I particularly like the Summary of Equality & Diversity Legislation session that has been added recently – sooo useful and saves lots of time hunting around on different websites!

Social Care Institute for Excellence: (SCIE) has a whole raft of e-learning resources, which are freely available - including audio, video and interactive use of technology – which have been designed to aid learning about key issues, research, policies and approaches relating to mental health of older people. The units include such topics as: common mental health problems amongst older people, understanding the early stages of dementia, understanding later stages of dementia, understanding depression in later life, plus many more. They can be studied individually, or used in a classroom setting.

Social Care Institute for Excellence: Dignity in Care  – is a 171 page document downloaded from the website full of good practice matters, self/care home/agency assessment audit, etc on ‘Dignity in Care’. It is number 9 of their ‘Good Practice Guides’ (which are always excellent!) and provides some great talking points for team meetings or training sessions.

Water for Health:

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Please let us know of any useful web addresses that you would like to share.

More importantly, please let us know if you find any of the above websites to be innacurate or misleading and we will remove them from our listing. 

In either case, please contact the Reside Care Homes with your suggestion.

Disclaimer

Reside Care Homes are not affiliated with any of the organisations above, and link to their websites in good faith, although this should not be taken as endorsement of any kind.

Reside Care Homes are not responsible for the content or reliability of any websites linked to from this site, and we cannot accept liability for any damage or loss arising from reliance on such websites. 

Unfortunately, we cannot guarantee that these links will work all of the time and we have no control over the availability of the linked pages.