The People’s Care Alliance is a collaboration between The PHA and The People’s Care Watchdog. Together we are busy collaborating with other likeminded grass roots initiatives to create new compassionate models for care, and to ensure accountability is upheld within current Social Care services. This includes innovative therapies, treatments, and choices that you will not find via the NHS, Social Services, or profit driven private care settings.
The People’s Care Alliance want to change attitudes and open up opportunities for those who need care, their families and care workers. We will achieve this in two phases resourcing and creating. First we resource families with knowledge to explore caring at home and navigating legalities. Then we create the new.
Our primary aims are:
- Empower people through information, education, and signposting
- Create blue prints for new systems of care
Compassionate care goes beyond simply addressing the medical or physical aspects of a person’s condition and centres around fostering a therapeutic relationship built on trust, empathy, and understanding. It involves understanding and responding to the physical, emotional, and psychological needs of patients or clients with kindness, respect, and sensitivity.
Our new systems for care aim to prioritise choice, comfort, support, and dignity to individuals and their families during times of vulnerability, promoting their overall well-being and quality of life. Importantly, minimising distress or stress during challenging times by ensuring access to information and support is readily available and easily accessed.
Key elements of compassionate care:
- Empathy: Healthcare providers or caregivers strive to understand and share the feelings of their patients or clients, and families putting themselves in their shoes to better comprehend their needs and concerns.
- Active listening: Taking the time to actively listen to patients or clients, and their families allows healthcare providers to gain insight into their experiences, fears, and desires. This helps in tailoring care plans to meet individual needs.
- Respect and dignity: Compassionate care recognises the inherent worth and value of every person. It involves treating individuals with respect, preserving their dignity, and honouring their autonomy and choices.
- Emotional support: Providing emotional support is an essential aspect of compassionate care. This can involve offering comfort, reassurance, and encouragement to help individuals cope with their emotions and navigate challenging situations.
- Clear communication: Effective and compassionate care requires clear and open communication between healthcare providers, patients, and their families. This ensures that information is shared in a way that is easily understood and empowers individuals to make informed decisions about their own care, or that of a loved one.
- Holistic approach: Compassionate care takes into account the whole person, recognising that physical health is interconnected with mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. It considers the individual’s values, beliefs, and preferences when developing care plans and environments created with the aim to help them thrive.
Heart Centred Innovation
Heart-centered innovation in a care setting describes to the approach of incorporating empathy, compassion, and human connection into the process of developing and implementing new ideas, technologies, or practices in healthcare. It emphasises the importance of putting the needs and well-being of patients and caregivers at the forefront of innovation efforts.
In a heart-centered innovation approach, the focus is not solely on finding solutions that are technically advanced or cost-effective, but also on creating interventions that genuinely improve the quality of care and enhance the overall patient experience. This approach recognises that healthcare is fundamentally about caring for people, and innovation should be driven by a deep understanding of their unique needs, values, and emotions.
Heart-centered innovation involves actively involving patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals in the design and development process. Their insights and perspectives are valued and integrated into the innovation process, ensuring that the resulting solutions are truly patient-centred and address the real challenges faced in care settings.
This approach also encourages collaboration and interdisciplinary teamwork, bringing together valued experience from various backgrounds, including healthcare providers, professional and public skills, families and patients themselves. By fostering a culture of open communication and shared decision-making, heart-centered innovation promotes a holistic and inclusive approach to problem-solving for significant and institutionalised issues.
Furthermore, heart-centered innovation recognises the importance of continuous learning and improvement. It encourages a mindset of curiosity and adaptability, where feedback from patients and caregivers, and families is actively sought and used to refine and iterate on innovations. This iterative process allows for ongoing development and improvement of solutions, ensuring that they continue to meet the evolving needs of patients, families, and care providers..
Current Care Projects
Short Film
A moving compilation of personal testimonies describing the problems we face in care homes, the solution we envisage and a call to action for people who wish to help us transform the care system.
Blueprints for new care villages / social enterprise care homes.
Removing the focus from profit and targets, and introducing more natural life affirming environments.
Dementia Pioneers
Latest research into lifestyle, medication and supplements etc. Helping people prevent dementia & slow down early onset dementia with simple, layered life changes and practices.
Resource Packs
Providing advice and signposting to appropriate support from families who have already navigated the social care system. Topics include:
- Practical ideas and advice
- Choosing a care setting
- Support for carers
- Legal signposting
- Financial signposting
New Compassionate Care Blueprints
Collating information and models for people within communities to take the and create their own social enterprise care home, village, or care cooperative. Initial Blueprints include:
- Community run care homes/ social enterprise care homes
- Care cooperatives
- Low impact built care villages
- Re-purposing of retirement apartments
Our Care Innovation Partners
The Peoples Care Watchdog
Provides an easy way for people to access resources and also leave evidence. Submitted data will be passed to Together Care Committee, journalists, MP’s etc. (See below)
Together Care Committee
Part of Together Declaration along with some more fantastic collaborators. The Peoples Care Watchdog is going to be feeding in evidence of unlawful end of life issues that is submitted via their website.
R4R?
Unlock Care Homes?