In our article last week, we looked at one of the key principles of dignity in care: communication. Good communication is essential to ensure dignity in care; staff should understand the person they are supporting and give them time to express their specific needs and preferences themselves.

This week we have been exploring another key principle of dignity in care: ‘the responsibility to shape care and support services around each individual’, and how this can be used to support workforce development relevant to any Social Care setting.

Treating the person you support as a respected individual is a key part of person-centred care and will ensure dignity. Delivering personalised services will mean different things to each individual, but it’s ultimately about giving that person, choice and control.

“Constantly remembering that the needs and preferences of individuals are placed at the heart of their care and support, helps keep our focus where it should always be. It’s about listening, understanding, honouring and implementing the individual’s personal perspectives and preferences, thereby giving choice and control. Person-centred care and support is not something extraordinary, but is part of everyday life and should be something everybody practises.” The Common Core Principles: Dignity, Principle 2 (Skills for Care)

Scie have created a short video (below) to support this principle and show how person-centred care can help people to maintain a persons dignity.

Here are some ideas for how to use these videos to support CPD for you and your team…

• You could use them as a discussion tool in team meetings
• You could use them in 1:1’s with your staff and discuss the videos relevant to their role
• You could set these as development tasks for your team in supervision

Sources Used: Scie: Dignity in Care; Skills for Care: Common Core Principles, Dignity

How AJ Can Help

As a specialist, family-run recruitment business, we support organisations to target issues such as continuity of staffing, reducing spend where you have a high volume of agency usage and supporting those who have specific talent requirements or are in hard to fill locations. We can help with any immediate staffing requirements or longer-term recruitment projects to ultimately save you time and money on agency spend. Click here to see how we have supported our clients.

If you would like us to set up a video call to discuss how we can collaborate, please let us know. To get in touch, my contact details are 03305 552233 and my email address is [email protected].