Press Release

Revealed: First 35 Care Homes To Achieve 'Gold Standard' Accreditation For End Of Life Care

25 June 2008

The first 35 care homes in the UK to have achieved 'Gold Standard' accreditation for end of life care will today receive their awards at a ceremony in Birmingham, sponsored by Help the Aged and new charity Omega. *

The Gold Standards Framework for Care Homes Training Programme (GSFCH), aims to improve the organisation and quality of care for residents in the last years of life, to improve team working with others and to reduce avoidable hospital admissions. To qualify for accreditation, care homes must have undertaken the full GSFCH Training programme over 9 months, embedded this into their homes for at least 6 months and then undertake a rigorous accreditation process 'Going for Gold.' **

Dr. Keri Thomas, National Lead for the Gold Standards Framework, said:

"The Gold Standards Framework is about helping people to live well until they die. This training and accreditation programme is about quality improvement, quality assurance and also quality recognition of homes, in an area of care that sometimes receives a bad press. We want to develop a national momentum of excellence, with homes aspiring to this high standard of care for people nearing the end of life.  Accredited care homes will become part of a ‘Solid Gold’ group of homes, nationally recognized, with many benefits and means of continued quality improvement.  They are becoming models of excellence, and will be an encouragement for those just embarking on this work.

"Care Homes have worked very hard to achieve this award.  Only those that have demonstrated real improvements in many aspects of care will qualify, leading to more people enabled to live and die with dignity in the home. Across the UK we now have some excellent examples of good practice - we are really proud of them and wish to pay tribute to the often unsung heroes, and heroines, of care homes."

The Gold Standards Framework Training Programme is the biggest and most comprehensive training programme to improve care at the end of life, with more than 600 nursing homes across the UK involved so far. The three aims are to: improve the quality of care provide for people in the final years of life, develop good collaboration with others such as local GPs and hospices, and ensure that fewer people  are admitted to hospitals in the final stage of life. Pre-planning of care is a key underlying feature.


Paul Cann, Director of Policy at Help the Aged, who is presenting the awards said:

"Around one in five deaths in the UK take place in care homes, and this figure is set to increase as our population ages. But current taboos around death and dying mean that older people are all too often not consulted on their preferences.

"Sustaining pioneering initiatives such as the Gold Standards Framework will raise the bar in End of Life Care.  Help the Aged believes that however you die; you should be able to do so with dignity.

"Too often older people receive an inferior quality of care and inadequate communication. Older people should be better supported to ensure dignity, comfort and the best possible quality of life.

"A dignified, comfortable death must become the rule, not the exception. The Government must incorporate the recommendations of the GSF in the End of Life Care strategy, expected later this summer."

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