Residential Care Services

Running head: RESIDENTIAL CARE SERVICES
RESIDENTIAL CARE SERVICES
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RESIDENTIAL CARE SERVICES
What is a residential care home?
Residential care homes offer personalized care services to small groups of adults along with
lodging, meal services as well as assistance with the daily living activities. They are also termed
as adult family homes, board and care homes as well as personal care homes (Mozley 2017).
Source: (Phelan and McCormack 2016)
How effective are their services in ensuring safety and quality?
 Healthcare technologies and innovative approaches:
One of the most interesting advancements made in residential care is their
adoption of healthcare technologies and innovative approaches. Most of the
residential care services are now connected with bigger hospitals through
telehealth services (Phelan and McCormack 2016). Therefore, if any complex
health care issues arise which require assistance from expert physicians, surgeons
or advanced nurse practitioners, they can be easily managed by connected with
the experts through telehealth.
The healthcare professional in the residential care can also engage in video-
conferencing to seek for advices from the experts, when they face dilemma
regarding any decision-making regarding health of patients. In this way, the

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RESIDENTIAL CARE SERVICES
healthcare professionals of the residential care always ensure that the safest and
bets quality services are provided to patients without taking any risks regarding
patient’s health when they need suggestion or are confused over complex issues
Source: (McFeeters et al. 2016)
 Legislative framework:
The Care Standards Act 2000 and the Regulation of Care Act 2001 have
successfully established new forms of regulatory frameworks for all
types of care homes in the United Kingdom.
The important three elements of this act that every residential care homes in the
nation follows are the regulation and standards, effective monitoring as well as
inspection as well as enforcements.
It needs to be known that the standards are not legally enforceable but failure to
meet with the standards is utilized as evidences in prosecutions of the failure to
comply with the regulations.
Previously, under the legislations, individual health authorities are found to be
responsible for initially registering and inspecting nursing homes whereas the

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RESIDENTIAL CARE SERVICES
local authorities are responsible for registering and inspecting residential care
homes.
Now, under the newest modification of the act in 2002. The responsibilities have
shifted to Commission for Health Improvement and three other new
central organizations: the National Care Standards Commission in
England, the National Assembly for Wales, and the Scottish
Commission for the Regulation of Care
 Effective risk management and safeguarding:
Residential care services harbor huge number of old age patients who remain at
high risks for various form of preventable accidents, falls and several infections
(due to weakened immunity systems because of age). Therefore, the residential
care organizations take initiatives for risk managements in order to ensure safety
of the patients and preventing them to suffer from any negative outcomes.
The domains which are covered in the risk assessment systems are the security
risks, fire risks as well as occupational health and safety compliance risks. The
other domains include the equipment and system failure risks as well as natural
disaster risks and even accreditation risks, financial as well as credit risks,
property damage risks and adequacy of insurance risks (McFeeters et al. 2016).
Fall risks and infection control risks are also monitored by the risk management
committee to ensure that patients seeking service in the residential home can have
positive and satisfactory experiences in the care services.