Gold Standards Framework

Cedar Lodge in Taunton has been awarded the prestigious Gold Standards Framework (GSF) Care Home Quality Hallmark Award with Commended Status.

Over the past year the staff, service users and relatives have been working hard to put in place this essential standard which provides a framework for planning with people how they wish to live.

The program has been successfully spread from 12 to 1,700 GP practices across the UK in three years. The framework was developed by Dr Keri Thomas who is based at the John Taylor Hospice in Birmingham. It helps clinicians and care providers identify people in the last years of life, assess their needs, symptoms and preferences and plan care on that basis, enabling patients to live and die where they choose.

GSF at Cedar Lodge is a systematic common-sense approach to formalising best practice, so that quality care and end of life care becomes standard for every service user living there. It embodies an approach that centres on the needs of people and their families and encourages inter-professional teams to work together. GSF can help coordinate better care provided by generalists across different settings.

GSF at Cedar Lodge has enabled:

• Consistent high quality care

• Pre-planning and anticipation of needs

• Improved staff confidence and teamwork

• More home based and less hospital based care

• Increased depth of knowledge in holistic approaches