Dignity in Care with Maggie Candy

On 1st February, everyone at Cavendish celebrated Dignity Action Day – A day of raising awareness and giving everyone the opportunity to contribute to upholding people’s rights to dignity. We caught up with our nursing consultant and Dignity Champion, Maggie Candy. Maggie explains what Dignity in Care is and why it is so important.

Here are her thoughts:

What is Dignity in Care?

Dignity in Care is always about treating the person with the utmost respect and courtesy. It is about ensuring that you give them as much information as possible so that they are going to be able to make an informed choice about their decisions. As we are a health care company, we often have people who are sick or who have disabilities, and it is all about identifying what that is, by careful evaluation, but also doing your best to promote whatever they can do for themselves. It is about making sure that they keep their independence for as long as possible so that they can have a good life.

Why is Dignity in Care important?

Dignity in Care is important because, without that, you’ll never get outstanding care. Here at Cavendish Homecare, we promote outstanding care by constantly involving the families in all of our decisions. We also support John’s Campaign for those living with dementia. This is all about involving families so that you can find out what is best for this person and draw up the best care plans and best practice so that this person can have as good in life as they can.

How has Cavendish Homecare supported Dignity in Care?

As a highly bespoke care provider, I am very happy to say that I see this every day that Cavendish Homecare provide the same staff to attend to people which is great. That means that the staff really build up a good rapport with that person or that family. We have such high standards that the staff do everything that they can and they know exactly what they should be doing. They’re very highly skilled so whether it’s looking after somebody at home with a disability or looking after them in end of life care – our staff know exactly what to do and how to make this journey appropriate and peaceful for them.

How does Dignity in care make a difference to the patient?

Dignity is all about giving the person personalisation of their care and personalization in their decisions. It is about making sure that they’ve received the very best of care from everyone around them so they can enjoy their life right up to the full.

Is there a template to follow if you want to implement this process?

Dignity in Care does have a list of the 10 Dignity Do’s which is about avoiding discrimination, ensuring confidentiality and making sure that people can make a complaint without the fear of this having an influence on the care they are going to receive. I’m very pleased to say that all of those 10 Dignity Do’s, we do here at Cavendish Homecare and it works really well.

How do you make this aware to a wider audience?

Last year we promoted John’s campaign which I have been an ambassador for since 2015. I have also been a dignity ambassador since 2009 and it’s about making sure that that’s represented and that families are aware of this – and of course staff need to know as well. We need to run with days like today (Dignity Action Day) and get this promoted and make sure that we always support and promote current health initiatives so that our care services actually evolve to meet the needs of people.