Penrose Care has teamed up with St John’s Hospice in St John’s Wood NW8 and Mestizo Mexican Restaurant in Camden / Euston to help expand Penrose Care’s social impact capabilities on social media.

As the first part of our campaign, we’ll be focusing on attracting new Twitter followers. When our Twitter account www.twitter.com/PenroseCare (or @PenroseCare) achieves certain follower levels, we’ll do something special:

• 500 Twitter followers: For our first 500 Twitter followers who also retweet our Tweet or Tweets promoting this campaign, we’ll enter them into our Dinner-for-Two Raffle for a meal at Mestizo Mexican Restaurant. See Terms & Conditions below for more details.

• 1,000 Twitter followers: Once we achieve 1,000 followers, Penrose Care will donate £100 to St John’s Hospice, a fellow champion of dignity in care.

Penrose Care, London’s ethical home care provider based in Hampstead, north west London, is committed to providing excellent homecare with compassion underpinned by a variety of ethical practices such as paying our support workers the London Living Wage including for travel time spent between client homes, providing top-of-the-range training, and maintaining a generous occupational sickpay scheme. Penrose Care strongly believes that upholding these ethical practices is fundamental to being able to consistently provide high quality care at home to the elderly and non-elderly adults with disabilities we serve.

As a demonstration of its committment to ethics, Penrose Care was one of the first four home care providers in England in 2012 to become an Accredited Living Wage Employer out of nearly 7,000 agencies. Today, Penrose Care is one of four Accredited Living Wage Employers in London’s home care sector out of over 1,000 providers. Further, Penrose Care is proud to be the first independent sector home care provider in England to be compliant with Citizens UK’s landmark Social Care Charter, an ethical pathway for social care providers, including care homes and nursing homes, as well as home care providers.

While we are committed to achieving these aims within our own remit, we believe it is our duty to promote ethical practices in social care to the public and those providers who operate outside of our immediate remit. Hence our commitment to social change through such channels as social media.

Thank you for your support!

About St John’s Hospice

St John’s Hospice, an independent charity located within the Hospital of St John’s and St Elizabeth in St John’s Wood, provides free specialised palliative care to more than 2,000 terminally-ill patients and their families every year.

About Mestizo Mexican Restaurant

MESTIZO is the concept of a group of Mexicans to bring to London a restaurant-bar offering a fine and authentic Mexican cuisine. The name MESTIZO suggests “mezcla” or “fusion”, a term that was utilised principally to designate the descendents of indigenous Mexicans with Spaniards. Our mission at MESTIZO is to bring to London the best that Mexican food has to offer.

Terms & Conditions for Dinner-for-Two Raffle

Entry:

Participation in Penrose Care’s Dinner-for-Two Raffle is free of charge. Entry is open to persons who are residents of Greater London, 18 years and above in age, and 1) is a person or organisation that is one of the first 500 followers of @PenroseCare on Twitter and 2) retweets one or more of the Tweets @PenroseCare generates to promote this campaign and that includes a link to this web page describing the campaign and this raffle.

Should an organisation win the raffle, they must choose a recipient of their organisation who is a resident of Greater London and 18 years of age or above.

The raffle is not open to Penrose Care employees or those actively involved in the management of the raffle.

Prizes:

The prize will be a £75 voucher with a 30-day expiry for a dinner-for-two, at the following restaurant:

Mestizo Mexican Restaurant

103 Hampstead Road

London NW1 3EL

020 7387 4064

www.mestizomx.com

Proof of identity and age may be requested.

By accepting the prize, the winner agrees that Penrose Care Ltd and Mestizo Mexican Restaurant can use the winner’s name and photograph for promotional purposes. Winners may be asked (and agree to) provide a photograph and be photographed if required, and provide comment on being selected as a winner, which may be used to promote future Penrose Care raffles.

Draw date: Within 10 days of @PenroseCare achieving 500 followers. If not achieved by 30 June 2014, the raffle shall cease and not take place.

The draw shall be a random selection of those Twitter followers that qualify.

Unclaimed prize: The winner shall be notified by a Twitter message and then asked to call Penrose Care on 020 7435 2644. If the winner does not claim their prize within 10 days of being informed or if they notify Penrose Care that they are not eligible, the raffle shall be re-conducted as soon as is practicable.

Promoter: Penrose Care Ltd, 9 McCrone Mews, Belsize Lane, London NW3 5BG. enquiries@penrosecare.co.uk

By retweeting a Tweet of @PenroseCare including a link to this page, you agree to these terms and conditions.

The raffle draw is subject to the laws of England and the jurisdiction of the English courts.

Continued economic concerns as well as ongoing demographic challenges mean that changes like the recent announcement by Suffolk County Council, where adult social care funding is being cut in actual terms, are likely to be increasingly more common. We believe that over the course of the next generation, it will become increasingly more common for the elderly to have to pay for at least part of their personal care needs. It is vital therefore that provision is made for these future needs.

At Penrose Care we have a straightforward approach to calculating the cost of homecare services provided, providing clear quotes allowing our clients to appropriately budget for their care needs. These fees are set to be sufficient to comply with all relevant laws and regulations such as the National Minimum Wage and Employers National Insurance contributions, fund top of the range training which includes an up to 12-days induction vs 1-3 days common in the sector, continuing professional development such as a QCF Level 2 Award in Dementia Awareness, Penrose Care’s unique London Living Wage committment, top-of-line infrastructure such as our staff’s smart phones and our NFC-enabled time management system, and so on.

We believe that the increasing percentage of care receivers paying directly for their own care will undoubtedly drive up standards in the sector, with care providers ‘upping their game’ by focusing on developing a highly professional and motivated workforce.

References

(1) “Suffolk County Council announces £38.6m of cuts”: 26 Jan 2014 (BBC News, 2014), available here.

Dr. Knight trained as a doctor at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, Hampstead and University College London (UCL). He then undertook his postgraduate training in Internal Medicine, based in north west London, and is currently working full time as a Registrar in Respiratory Medicine, at the Barnet General Hospital. His main interests are Asthma and allergy and he is currently studying part time for a Masters degree in Allergy, at Imperial College London. Dr. Matthew Knight is the co-founder and non-executive director of Hampstead-based Penrose Care, a provider of home care services in London to the elderly – including to persons with dementia – and to non-elderly adults with physical and/or learning disabilities.

Penrose Care is proud to be only one of three Accredited Living Wage Employers in the London home care sector out of over 1,000 agencies. Penrose Care provides short care at home visits, day sitting, night services including sleepovers, and live-in care services.

Since the fourth quarter of 2013, Penrose Care has experienced a marked increase in press coverage for our pioneering efforts in ethics in social care. Such press coverage is in of itself a testament to a component of our ethos that it is not sufficient to just be ethical within our own remit, but also to promote ethics generally by speaking up. Our firm belief that ethics in social care promotes excellence is care is backed up by the facts of Penrose Care: to date, all our client feedback has been excellent and we’ve had no care worker leave voluntarily.

To assist our clients and prospective clients in keeping abreast of Penrose Care’s social impact initiatives, we have collated this press coverage in this article.

Press coverage since the fourth quarter of 2013

In our first news coverage of 2014, on 7 Jan 2014, the Guardian published an article “Care at Christmas” (by Claire Burke), which mentioned a Guardian Witness submission of a video of a Penrose Care-organised choir singing Christmas Carols at Marie Curie Hospice Hampstead on 15 Dec 2013, as part of a community giving initiative. Read More…

We at Penrose Care were particularly proud to be featured in the December 2013 homecare.co.uk, the UK’s #1 independent information site for home care, in a 4 Dec 2013 article “Profile: ‘To promote a caring workforce, the organisation itself must be caring’ says Penrose Care managing director” (by Nina Hathway). The article highlights the unique and pioneering ethical frameworks underlying Penrose Care’s home care services including our being the first independent sector home care provider to be compliant with Citizens UK’s landmark Social Care Charter. Read More…

One of the most high-profile ethical commitments of Penrose Care has been our London Living Wage commitment, which really stood out after the HMRC revealed that a number of providers were flouting the national minimum wage, let alone paying the living wage. A 4 Dec 2013 Guardian article titled “Pressure mounts for better pay for homecare workers” (by Sue Learner) noted Penrose Care’s unique commitment to the living wage. Read More… The article followed an article of the same topic on homecare.co.uk published 25 Nov 2013 titled “A third of home care providers pay less than national minimum wage” (also by Sue Learner). Read More…

Within a wider set of coverage on whether or not Westminster Council should be paying the London Living Wage, the Wood & Vale ran a special feature on 21 Nov 2013, “Care bosses take salary cut to ensure staff receive fair income” (by Alex Wellman) for Penrose Care’s management accepting to be paid below typical rates to ensure frontline care staff can be paid the London Living Wage. The article also highlighted our community giving initiatives with St John’s Hospice. The article can be read online on page 4 of this 21 Nov 2013 digital edition of theWood & Vale. Read More…

On 04 Nov 2013, at the start of the UK’s Living Wage Week 2014, ITV published the current list of Accredited Living Wage Employers. The list exemplified the continued uniqueness of Penrose Care’s Living Wage commitment with it being only one of nine such Living Wage employers in England’s home care sector out of over 7,000 providers. Feeling that its excellent workforce deserved the new London Living Wage rate of £8.80/hour (from £8.55/hour), Penrose Car’s management took the heroic decision of implementing the rate increase immediately. This move was picked up by homecare.co.uk in its article “London home care provider raises carer pay” (by Nina Hathway). Read More…

On 10 Oct 2013, the Great British Care Awards announced Penrose Care had been shortlisted as a finalist in the Great London Care Awards 2013 as “Best Employer”. This news was followed up on 11 Oct 2013, in the Jewish Chronicle’s article “With friends and outings, life is rosy” (by Billie Josephs) on page H12 of the Health & Wellbeing Supplement (digital copy not available).

Older articles

On 28 June 2013, the Jewish Chronicle’s article “What makes a perfect carer?” (by Elisa Cowen) on page CN6 of the Care & Nursing Supplement (digital copy not available), highlighted Penrose Care’s industry leading induction program for care workers that lasted up to 12 days. For comparison, in the same article, a competing provider described as “another agency with a highly developed training infrastructure”, only provided a two-day induction training for its care workers – highlighting the uniquely high standards of training Penrose Care workers are put through.

On 5 Nov 2012, we received our first mention in a media outlet with the Guardian publishing the first-ever list of the UK’s Accredited Living Wage Employers in the article “Boris Johnson and Ed Miliband” (by Andrew Sparrow) speak on the living wage: Politics live blog, for which Penrose Care is among the first four in England’s home care sector. Read More…

Robert Stephenson-Padron is the co-founder and managing director of Penrose Care.

We usually associate G8 conferences with rallies against globalization and rescue packages for the world economy. Yet today world leaders have committed to furthering international efforts to fight dementia- one of the greatest ticking time bombs threatening our society. The UK government alone will double expenditure from its current 60 million pounds to over 130 million pounds by 2025.

The G8 have stated that it would “develop a coordinated international research action plan to target the gaps in research and ways to address them” (1) The Alzheimer’s Society state that there are 800,000 people in the UK with dementia (2), the vast majority of whom are over the age of 65. There are an estimated 44 million people world wide that currently suffer from dementia and how society will meet the challenge of their ongoing medical and home care needs is not yet clear.

The term dementia describes a wide range of conditions- characterized by the progressive decline in the brain’s function. It often presents with difficulties with memory in the first instance, but may also present with general cognitive functions, language skills, mood and judgment (3).

There are many causes of dementia- but the most common ones include Alzheimer’s Disease (where protein structures called plaques and tangles deposit within the cells of the brain causing cellular dysfunction), Vascular Dementia (where brain cells are damaged due to blockage of the blood supply resulting in small strokes), Dementia with Lewy Bodies (a disease with some similarities to Parkinson’s Disease, which results from abnormal protein collections called Lewy bodies depositing in the frontal lobe of the brain- mainly affecting judgment and causing hallucinations) and Fronto-temporal dementia (where damage to brain cells in the front of the brain results in personality and character changes in the early stages). There are up to 100 different causes of dementia.

The accurate diagnosis of dementia is vital- to ensure that appropriate treatments and services are made available (both now and as new treatments become available in the future) and to ensure that reversible causes of confusion are addressed (for example recurrent urinary tract or chest infections, poor eye site, high blood pressure and cholesterol increasing the risk of progression of vascular dementia). The diagnosis of dementia often involves being seen by a specialist following consultation with a GP, and may involve referral to a memory clinic and will usually involve a number of blood tests and a scan of the brain.

The diagnosis of dementia can come as quite a shock and accessing appropriate support is vital. Your GP and specialist can advise on this. A large amount of support material can be found via the Alzheimer’s Society website http://www.alzheimers.org.uk which provides a wide variety of information booklets and links to local support agencies and services.

We are please to see that in patients where the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s versus another form of dementia is unclear, a new dementia brain scan that detects Amyloid protein in the brain (which is a characteristic sign of Alzheimer’s disease) is now available here in the UK.

Once dementia is diagnosed a specialist will decide on whether drug treatments which slow down the process of loss of brain cell function and neurotransmitter depletion are likely to be beneficial (at present these medicines do not slow the rate of cell death down) (4)

As the process of dementia advances, it is likely that more support services will be needed. Home care services can provide a vital support facilitating activities of daily living such as helping with washing and dressing, medication reminders, shopping through to providing companionship and company.

Increased funding into research in dementia will help us identify treatments to slow the process down or even reverse some of the damage already done and investigate further the risk factors associated with dementia. A recent 35 year longitudinal study from Cardiff University found that exercise was the single biggest influence of dementia levels (5)- hopefully future research will delineate the mechanisms underlying these associations and help us find a better cure for dementia. We believe that this combined and coordinated approach from the worlds leading countries will help us fight the battle against dementia, which has scarred the lives of so many families.

At Penrose Care we provide support to our clients with various forms of dementia, and are happy to liaise with family and the patients doctors and hospital nurses to ensure that each client is adequately cared for. We provide a range of services in our clients homes ranging from short term respite care (from regular respite 1 day per month through to a few weeks to cover a holiday for a spouse), through to intensive home care packages in the home. We aim to maximize quality of life and independence for our clients.

Dr. Knight trained as a doctor at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, Hampstead and University College London (UCL). He then undertook his postgraduate training in Internal Medicine, based in north west London, and is currently working full time as a Registrar in Respiratory Medicine, at the Barnet General Hospital. His main interests are Asthma and allergy and he is currently studying part time for a Masters degree in Allergy, at Imperial College London. Dr. Matthew Knight is the co-founder and non-executive director of Hampstead-based Penrose Care, a provider of home care services in London to the elderly – including to persons with dementia – and to non-elderly adults with physical and/or learning disabilities.

Penrose Care is proud to be only one of four Accredited Living Wage Employers in the London home care sector out of over 1,000 agencies and the first independent sector home care organisation in England out of over 7,000 agencies to be compliant with Citizens UK’s landmark Social Care Charter, an ethical pathway for social care providers. Penrose Care provides short care at home visits, day sitting, night services including sleepovers, and live-in care services.

References

1) “G8 ‘will develop dementia cure or treatment by 2025′”: 10 Dec 2013 (BBC News, 2013), http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25318194

2) What is dementia? Fact Sheet: March 2012 (Alzheimer’s Society, 2012) http://www.alzheimers.org.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.php?documentID=106

3) About Dementia – Dementia Guide (NHS, accessed 11 Dec 2013) http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/dementia-guide/Pages/about-dementia.aspx

4) “Dementia: Five Priorities”: 10 Dec 2013 (BBC News, 2013), http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25263341

The Guardian Social Care Network and Department of Health’s recent homecare survey (1) found that one of the three key factors of offering good homecare was “friendly, respectful, capable care workers” – in summary, those special people who have a vocation to care.

When in 2012 Dr. Matthew Knight and I founded Penrose Care, a homecare provider based in Hampstead, London, our goal was to find these special people and put them to work looking after the elderly and disabled. Paying the London Living Wage in a sector that struggles to even comply with the National Minimum Wage (2), we felt, was essential to achieving this goal.

As Living Wage Week 2013 marks one year since Penrose Care became one of the UK’s first Accredited Living Wage Employers in the home care sector, we now have hard facts we can share. Since there are only four of us in London out of over 900 homecare agencies – we have unique insights.

It is difficult to teach friendliness and respect and so the best thing is to hire care workers who already possess those qualities. Being a Living Wage Employer has helped us attract excellent workers like Perrine, a degree educated young woman who discovered her vocation to care while caring for the infirm in Lourdes, France. She is a model of a care worker who is friendly, respectful, and capable and she can pursue her vocation at Penrose Care because we pay a Living Wage.

The results of hiring individuals like Perrine, along with adhering to other ethical practices outlined in Citizens UK’s landmark Social Care Charter (3), are stark.

Whereas Guardian’s survey found that less than half of respondents had a positive experience with care staff, all our client feedback to date has been excellent. This is exemplified by our being the only home care agency with a 5/5 Star Rating on NHS Choices (4) within a 3 mile radius of our branch.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (5) has linked low-pay with the issue of high staff turnover and non-continuity of care staff. At Penrose Care, we have had no care worker leave voluntarily. We strongly associate this with being a Living Wage Employer (6) (7).

Moreover, the attributes of being friendly and respectful should extend to care organisations as well. A great benefit of the voluntary nature of the Living Wage is that it gives employers an ability to give a credible signal to the public that we are ethical.

This is hugely beneficial as just increasing funding of the care system will not necessarily imply care firms will be more ethical. Sweden, which has the highest proportional public funding for home care in Europe, has suffered its own care scandals (8) by independent sector enterprises.

Penrose Care looks forward to continuing to work with the Living Wage Foundation and Citizens UK in promoting ethics in social care.

Robert Stephenson-Padron is Penrose Care’s managing director. Prior to founding Penrose Care in 2012 with Dr. Matthew Knight, Mr. Stephenson-Padron was a healthcare equity research analyst at Merrill Lynch in London. Prior to joining Merrill Lynch in in 2010, Mr. Stephenson-Padron was a healthcare equity research analyst at Barclays Capital, also based in London. From 2003-2008, Mr. Stephenson-Padron was a research assistant to epidemiologist Prof. Alison Galvani of Yale University.

Penrose Care is proud to be only one of four Accredited Living Wage Employers in the London home care sector out of c 925 agencies and the first independent sector home care organisation in England out of nearly 7,000 agencies to be compliant with Citizens UK’s landmark Social Care Charter, an ethical pathway for social care providers. Penrose Care provides short care at home visits, day sitting, night services including sleepovers, and live-in care services.

References

(1) “Time, pay and lack of training are main challenges for homecare staff”: 30 Oct 2013 (Guardian, 2013), available here.

(2) “Care budget cuts by councils put older people’s rights at risk, says report”: 08 Oct 2013 (Guardian, 2013), available here.

(3) London-based Penrose Care backs Citizens UK’s landmark Social Care Charter: 22 Oct 2013 (Penrose Care, 2013), available here.

(4) Home care (NHS Choices, accessed 08 Nov 2013), available here.

(5) Home care commissioning practices by local authorities must protect older people’s human rights: 08 Oct 2013 (Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2013), available here.

(6) Paying the Living Wage benefits business as well as employees: 04 Nov 2013 (The New Economics Foundation, 2013), available here.

(7) An independent study of the business benefits of implementing a Living Wage policy in London: Feb 2009 (London Economics, 2009), available here.

(8) “Stockholm elderly care scandal widens”: 02 Nov 2011 (The Local, 2011), available here.

Penrose Care is please to see a move in government policy the recognises both the desire of the elderly to stay in their homes and the need for care to be adequately funded.

The deferred loan scheme (1) for social care loans proposed by the Local Government Association (LGA) offers a pragmatic solution to providing high quality care, by allowing care costs to be borrowed from a government backed scheme and repaid at the end of life from the user’s estate.

The challenging demographic situation across Europe and the developed world, with ageing populations and shrinking work forces, means that government funded care is likely to continue to face significant funding pressures.

By recognising the need to fund care properly and provide the elderly with a form of liquidity at their time of need, schemes like this will enhance the quality of life and care of many elderly people who will benefit from having dignified personal care in their twilight years.

References

(1) “Councils call for national old age social care loans scheme”: 07 Nov 2013 (BBC News, 2013), available here.
Dr. Knight trained as a doctor at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, Hampstead and University College London (UCL). He then undertook his postgraduate training in Internal Medicine, based in north west London, and is currently working full time as a Registrar in Respiratory Medicine, at the Barnet General Hospital. His main interests are Asthma and allergy and he is currently studying part time for a Masters degree in Allergy, at Imperial College London. Dr. Matthew Knight is the co-founder and non-executive director of Hampstead-based Penrose Care, a provider of home care services in London to the elderly – including to persons with dementia – and to non-elderly adults with physical and/or learning disabilities.

Penrose Care is proud to be only one of four Accredited Living Wage Employers in the London home care sector out of c 925 agencies and the first independent sector home care organisation in England out of nearly 7,000 agencies to be compliant with Citizens UK’s landmark Social Care Charter, an ethical pathway for social care providers. Penrose Care provides short care at home visits, day sitting, night services including sleepovers, and live-in care services.