Teachers for Supply

I have worked inside the public sector for over 30 years and am aghast on the target-led regime which has now totally permeated the NHS, education and social services, at great cost to people. The league tables and endless inspections have swept away any respect for or acknowledgement of the human qualities people bring to their work. i’ve stood back bewildered while wonderful colleagues and friends who’ve committed themselves to helping people over a long time, whether pupils, patients or other service users, are being bullied. Managers mercilessly pursue their tick-box targets, often showing indifference to the particular quality of the work being achieved by the true people behind these targets.

Some colleagues have given up. “You simply ought to play the sport,” they are saying. But i think we won’t allow this to continue without an open debate. Those people with years of expertise should cleared the path, instead of cowering. A social work colleague before she left (defeated by soulless statistics) knitted a headband for each child she were working with. This act of care doesn’t be registered on any target sheet.

People of my age must be enjoying the satisfaction that includes knowing you’re doing all your job well after a few years of expertise. They’re instead distraught and furious that their achievements are being reduced as to if targets was met. Many younger people beginning their working lives have only ever known this target culture, so would possibly not see that the workplace may be very different. We have to speak out and interact to realign our work values in order that quality of labor is what’s cherished and nurtured, not number-crunching.
Catherine Hopewell
London

Norwegians like wood. They prefer chopping it, stacking it, creating a fire with it, and tending the fireplace. They discuss axes. They argue about whether wood must be stored with the bark underneath or uppermost – an issue not yet settled (questions take ages to get settled in Norway). So what can be more natural than a 12-hour television programme about firewood, of which eight hours featured only a log fire quietly burning away, with the occasional sputter as new fuel was added or a discreet toasting fork with a marshmallow on it appeared at the screen A fifth of the population tuned in last week when Norwegian state television broadcast the programme. Some described it as exciting. Others thought it provocative, due to stacking mistakes. Britain have been traumatised by The Killing and gripped by Borgen. Are we ready for another Scandinavian experience, reintroducing us to the pleasure of straightforward things

Prescriptions for psychotropic drugs, including those sometimes often called the “chemical cosh”, soar amongst elderly people who find themselves admitted to residential care homes, a brand new study shows.

The study, within the Journal of the yankee Geriatrics Society, looks on the prescribing of substances to calm anxiety and sedate, in addition to the antipsychotics that are purported to be prescribed for severe mental medical conditions inclusive of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and just for dementia as a final resort.

The researchers, from Queen’s University Belfast, done the study using information from the Northern Ireland prescribing database when it comes to over 250,000 people over the age of 65, but, they are saying, the pattern they discovered holds good for the complete of the united kingdom.

They discovered that just one.1% of elderly people living in the neighborhood of their own homes or with relatives were taking an antipsychotic – the so-called “chemical cosh” drugs, which the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) warns aren’t appropriate for many those with dementia.

But in care homes, 20.3% of residents were on them. Additionally they checked out the dispensing records for those elderly those that made the move into care between January 2009 and January 2010 into care. Their medication shot up. Of their own homes, 1.1% were on antipsychotics, 7.3% were on hypnotics – sedatives or mood stabilisers – and three.6% were on drugs for anxiety.

Once in a care home, 8.2% were placed on antipsychotics, 14.8% got hypnotics and seven.8% were prescribed anxiolytic. 12 months later, the quantity of medication they were on had jumped again and 18.6% were on antipsychotics.

Within six months of admission to a care home, say the authors, 30.2% of all new residents had received no less than one prescription for an antipsychotic, 37.1% for a hypnotic and 24.5% for an anxiolytic.

Lead researcher Aideen Maguire, who’s based within the Centre of Excellence for Public Health Northern Ireland said: “Although drug dispensing is high in older people locally, we’ve got found that it increases dramatically on entry to care. This study showed that the high uptake of psychotropic drugs observed in care homes in Northern Ireland can’t be explained by a continuation of drug use initiated locally previous to entering care.

“With an ageing population globally it’s important that we glance on the reasons behind this sort of increase following admission to care. Antipsychotic uptake in Northern Ireland is identical to that during the remainder of the united kingdom and Ireland, and this study highlights the will for routine medicines reviews especially in the course of the transition into care.”

Their study couldn’t ascertain how appropriate the prescribing was, she said, and it was possible that those those who moved into care either did so owing to mental illnesses or became anxious over the move. But, she said, “there’s probably inappropriate prescribing taking place.” Other studies have also shown high levels of antipsychotic drug prescribing for elderly people in care homes in Britain.

Older people should consider going to college so that you can continue working beyond the official retirement age, the minister for higher education has said.

David Willetts encouraged workers on the end in their careers to work out higher education as an option. “There’s certainly a pressure for continuing to get retrained and upskilled. Higher education has an economic benefit in that in the event you stay awake so far with knowledge and abilities, you’re more employable,” he told reporters as he travelled with the prime minister, David Cameron, in India.

“Education is this sort of great point – it’s not reserved for younger people. There’ll be people of every age who probably want to study. There’s great value in lifelong learning.”

Student loans were restricted to people under 54, however the government permits prospective students of any age to take out loans for fees. Loans to hide living costs are restricted to the under-60s.

“There has been plenty of criticism in regards to the ageism of all this. The regime now’s, there isn’t a age limit on fee loans,” Willetts told the Daily Telegraph. Per the upper Education Statistics Agency, only one,940 undergraduates starting courses last year were older than 60, out of a complete of 552,240 students in Britain. Some 6,455 were aged between 50 and 60.

Tuition fees are a maximum of £9,000 per year in England and scholars start repayments once they have a salary of £21,000. Most pensioners have an income of not up to £16,000, so would never need to repay their loans.

Today, 10 million people within the UK are over 65 years old. The newest projections are for 5½ million more elderly people in 20 years’ time, and the number could reach 19 million by 2050.

Within this total, the variety of very old people is determined to grow even faster. There are currently 3 million people aged greater than 80, and this figure is projected to just about double by 2030 and reach 8 million by 2050. The federal government estimates that the fastest-growing age group within the next decades might be people over 100.

As the collection of elderly people grows, so does the pension deficit; British pension schemes are estimated to have a complete deficit of £312bn.

Last year the home of Lords heard evidence of the effect of an ageing population on public policy. Simon Ross, the executive executive of Population Matters, told the Lords: “We should always expect and enable people to work later in life than prior to now. Employers and the federal government should consider what changes to employment practices are required to enable people to work longer.

“This will include changes to work premises and equipment, encouraging people to work at home, and being more flexible in regards to sick leave.”

“Given the pensions shortfall, a versatile labour market should enable the ‘fit old’ to work as many or few days a week as they feel essential to top up their very own pensions, notably providing a workforce to take care of the ‘unfit older’.”

Willetts said educational patterns were changing. “There may be evidence that the concept that you first study after which stop isn’t what the sector is like several more,” he said. “In the event that they can profit from it, they must have that chance. If people need it so as to sustain so far with changes of their jobs, which is a chance they will take.”

The information commissioner, Christopher Graham, and Michael Gove have clashed over the public’s right to grasp the names, places and non secular affiliation, if any, of your complete groups who’ve applied to sign up for the government’s controversial free schools programme.

The education secretary perceived to suggest that Graham was effectively helping opponents of the taxpayer-funded schools, that are independent of local authorities, to intimidate applicants – prompting Graham to retort that the arguments of Gove’s department in resisting public disclosure “clearly did not convince”.

The steely exchange came as Gove reluctantly released details of 517 applications made for the 1st three waves of free schools after losing a tribunal ruling last month. Announcing he would now not challenge the commissioner’s decision, Gove claimed parents and teachers looking to join the government’s programme were vilified by opponents or even lost their jobs, even without full details of applications.

His department had beforehand fought rulings by Graham on applications from the British Humanist Association (BHA), and appealed to a tribunal at the issue “because we would have liked to offer protection to public-spirited volunteers from intimidation”.

He said ministers had heard of instances where teachers have been hounded out in their existing schools by supporting an application and one proposer had told them of a death threat.

Gove said his programme helped people “who want something better for his or her children and community”. He ended his hostile concession by saying: “i’d defend, to the death, definitely the right of anyone to oppose government policy. i don’t think, however, that it’s right to facilitate the targeted intimidation of brave people performing on noble motives.”

Graham wrote back: “While I note your strongly held views, strongly expressed, i can only observe that both the commissioner and the tribunal have taken careful account of all relevant factors in arriving at a balanced judgment as to where the general public interest lies. Your department’s arguments clearly didn’t convince. I note that you simply chose to not exercise your right of further entice the higher tribunal.”

Graham added that he did “not for a moment” accept that publication facilitated intimidation. “i’ll join you in defending the fitting of anyone to oppose (or support) government policy. But i can also defend the operation of the liberty of data Act within the public interest.”

Graham’s office recently put Gove’s department on a different monitoring list since it was among public organisations dragging its heels in responding to freedom of data requests.

Richy Thompson, faith schools campaigner on the BHA, said: “We believe that the former loss of transparency during this area represented a democratic deficit, with the general public being unable to understand who was applying to establish schools with state funds until after those schools have already been backed by the federal government to open. Hopefully, that needs to now change.”