Home is where the health is … ageing well in place. The following is a shortened edited version of a talk given to the Edinburgh University Advanced Care Research Centre (ACRC) Spring Symposium on Monday 15th April. Whether tenement flat, bungalow, farmhouse, or croft virtually every piece of research I have read or conversation I have held with folks over the years has articulated a desire to age in place, remain in place and to die in place – if all else is equal. Space and place are intrinsic to not only our psychological sense of wellbeing but also to our physical health, not least in a co ..read more

On April 11th there will be a global coming together for what for a number of years now has been recognised as World Parkinson’s Day. It sits within Parkinson’s Awareness Month which is designed to increase knowledge about and awareness of the condition. Like many people Parkinson’s has touched my life professionally and personally. It is a condition which affects around about 13,000 people in Scotland and every week it is estimated that around 30 new people are diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Anyone working in social care services and supports will be aware of the extent to which this condition a ..read more

This past week I have had a couple of conversations which though significantly unconnected have in my mind touched and influenced one another. One had to do with reaction to a television advert from the Alzheimer Society, the second a conversation with a Filippino care worker who is preparing to celebrate Black Saturday today. The Long Goodbye is a very emotional television advert with a voice over by the actor Colin Firth which shows a son delivering a eulogy at his mother’s funeral and recalling the many moments in his mother’s dementia experience where a part of her ‘died’ ‘again and again ..read more

The following is based on part of an address given last Tuesday at an online conference organised by Faith in Older People and Anna Chaplaincy. To begin with I have to acknowledge that any talk of care homes has to address the problem of image and stigma. Even before the pandemic but certainly since the very understanding of care homes is one that is too often associated with the negative. But I want to start from the perspective of challenging the stereotypes that care homes are places where people (to use the language that is often used), are places that people are  ‘put in’, or ‘end up ..read more

Tuesday coming, the 19th of March is World Social Work Day. I have spent a lot of my life surrounded by social workers both in terms of being colleagues of them, working alongside them, and even sharing office space with them. But I have also been very aware of the role of social work through relatives and family connections who were and are social workers. It is a profession, therefore, with which I am very familiar and for which I have over the years developed a deep respect, no less so than when I trained hundreds of social workers in Self-directed Support legislation, around issues such as ..read more

A couple of days ago I had the very real pleasure of being invited to give a Fireside Chat to the participants in one of the Queen’s Nursing Institute Scotland Leadership Development programmes. The Queens Nursing Institute is an amazing organisation and (in their own words): ‘supports, develops, and inspires Scotland’s community nurses and midwives to become agents for health improvement and catalysts for social change. Together, we are building a healthier, fairer, kinder Scotland.’ My ‘chat’ and conversation was centred around what I considered to be the key characteristics and marks of lea ..read more

My late mother had many favourite quotes most of which I have forgotten – so it is good to have a sister to remind me and to continue her voice! But one I can very well remember not least because she used it so often was ‘Treat others the way you want them to treat you.’ It was her equivalent of the biblical imperative often known as the Golden Rule where Christ says: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I’m not saying by any stretch of the imagination that I have lived up to the standards of the Golden Rule, but it was what came to my mind when I read the social media posts of ..read more

On the 1st of February 2024, representatives of thirty organisations and individuals working in Adult Social Care met at the University of Oxford to discuss the benefits and risks of using ‘generative AI’ in social care. I was pleased to be part of the event organised by the University of Oxford Institute for Ethics in AI, the Digital Care Hub and Casson Consulting.  I have written a bit over the years about Ai and most recently have reflected upon the potential of chat bots as well as the limitations of their use in social care. What is inescapable is that generative Ai is already being ..read more

A couple of weeks ago I spent time in the company of someone who I only knew fleetingly but who was so passionate about the care and support of older people and who had spent so much of his free time across his life advancing the cause of people who needed care. Within 24 hours that person had died suddenly. I was really shocked that someone who I had shared time with had died within a day of our meeting. I know I am not the only person who such an event has happened to, and I won’t be the last, but it is something which draws you back on yourself. It makes you begin to realise the fragility o ..read more

I have been away in London for a couple of days of meetings and events. It’s been a week which has seen my head and mind in the space of technology, not least Ai, and its potential benefits and challenges to the social care sector and I hope to write about Ai in social care in a future blog. But it has also been a week where I have been thinking about identity and what makes us truly human. My week of reflecting about identity started with the news on Tuesday that the Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Neuralink company had successfully implanted one of their wireless brain chips in a human being. A ..read more