Grey Matter Learning Blog

Thanks, as always, for the feedback on recent posts.  This week is Self Care Week;  I think you’ll agree that, given the current circumstances, looking after ourselves has never been more important. So, what is Self Care and why is important? I have met thousands of care workers and managers over the years and, almost…

Back in May, we shared a post about “Lockdown Learning” where we talked about the things we had learnt as a result of external circumstances.  We talked about how we adopted the motto “we can do that” and how that positivity had spread. As we approach another lockdown, fire break or circuit break, spending on…

Thanks as always for all the feedback on last week’s post, Competence is more important than attendance.  Whilst this is vital for all staff, how can we speed things up for new staff? The State of the Workforce report from Skills for Care (October 2020) outlines that staff turnover for Care Workers is above 38%…

Thanks as always for the feedback on previous posts and welcome to our new subscribers.  In writing the last couple of weeks’ posts, it reminded me that we have been having the same conversation around training for many years… It goes something like this: “But we must do the face-to face because the subject contains…

Following last week’s post about the digitisation of social care records and the guidance from CQC and Skills for Care, I wanted to circle back to the regulations; specifically Regulation 17 and something a colleague mentioned recently about quality assurance. In our Care Certificate answers (which can be found here), we outline that the Care…

Thanks for the comments and shares on our recent four part series on recruitment and retention – and a warm welcome to all our new subscribers! In doing the work for that series of posts, it reminded me of something I wrote back in 2016 – Time to move past paper and, just a day…

Thanks, as always, for the feedback on this four part series; today’s post is the last step in the process – Staff Retention. Everyone knows that it is much more cost-efficient to keep staff than it is to keep recruiting new ones.  Now clearly we have to recruit some new staff, as people leave for…

The third element of staffing is, of course, Training. Before we get stuck into this week’s post, let’s be clear why we carry out training at all, in any subject – it is so that the candidate LEARNS and is safe to practice.   We talked about this in a recent post called “Training vs…

Thanks for the feedback on our recent series – the four stages of recruitment.  We will come back to step three next week, as the Government has just announced additional funding for Infection Prevention and Control in order to reduce Coronavirus infections across the winter. More info can be found here and your Local Authority…