" Doing GSF Golden Years has made a fantastic difference at our Retirement Villages!

It helped raise awareness of the importance of talking about life and death, increased advance care planning discussions and improved communication between staff, residents, families and their GPs "

Shirley Hall

Extra Care Charitable Trust

Speaking at the celebration of the first Retirement Villages to receive GSF Accreditation Awards

Home Care - Domiciliary Care and Retirement Villages in the UK

Home care providers have a vital role to play in care for people living at home, and particularly for those who may be in the final year of life or living with any long term or life-limiting condition.

The GSF programmes have been well tried and tested involving thousands of staff in the UK, and can be used to enable those looking after people at home in generalist palliative and end of life care skills, boosting their confidence, releasing their talents and enabling better home care for large numbers of people.

There are 2 GSF Programmes specific to home care;

The GSF Domiciliary Care Programme- both Silver and Gold, for domiciliary care workers and their trainers

The GSF Retirement Village Programme tailored specifically for those managing and working in Retirement Villages or Communities- called 'The GSF Golden Years Programme' .

Domiciliary Care

Domiciliary Care workers are vital in helping people to live well and to remain at home right to the end if they wish to, thereby decreasing avoidable crisis hospital admissions.

Yet often care workers have not received adequate training and don't feel confident in this important area of care or able to work effectively with other community teams.

The Gold Standards Framework (GSF) Domiciliary Care Training Programme was first developed in 2011 and has been used by over 1500 care workers, initially at Certificate (Silver) level, to improve care for people in their last year, months, weeks and days of life. In 2019 the GSF Domiciliary Care Accreditation (Gold) programme was developed, in line with other GSF programmes.

There are now 2 ways you can introduce GSF into Domiciliary Care Agencies;

Silver (certificate)
and Gold (accreditation)- see flyer

GSF helps you implement national policy in practice.

GSF improves proactive, personalised, well-coordinated care, in line with the NHSE Long Term Plan, NICE Guidance, GPs’ Quality Outcomes Framework and Enhanced Health in Care Homes (EHCH), enhancing quality of care and reducing crisis hospital admissions and deaths, whilst providing evidence of impact for CQC and local commissioners.

See attainments of GSF accredited teams in the Frontrunners papers or throughout the GSF website.

The Domiciliary Care programme fits with other Gold Standards Framework training programmes to enable domiciliary carers to understand, more specifically, end of life care and how they are an integral part of the complete care package required by people at the end of life.

For the Domiciliary Care Poster, click here

For the Domiciliary Care Flyer, click here

GSF Domiciliary Care in a nutshell

Sarah Noakes described the updated GSF Domiciliary Care Programme

Retirement Villages

GSF addresses the needs of the ageing population - for all people in their final chapter of life, helping to provide;

‘gold standard care for

the golden years’

Since 2000, GSF has been the bedrock of training in care for people approaching the end of their life for tens of thousands of health and social care professionals in primary care, care homes, hospitals and domiciliary care, helping teams deliver personalised, quality care so that people can live well until they die. Increasing numbers of people now live in retirement villages, communities or schemes (currently about 75,000), a figure set to rise in coming years.

The GSF Retirement Village Programme, based on the extremely successful GSF programmes in domiciliary care and care homes was piloted using tailored resources, tools, measures, videos and a GSF RV training programme over a 6-9 months involving workshops, webinars, visits and support. Some retirement villages have successfully been GSF Accredited with the GSF Quality Hallmark Award and found it to be a transformational, delivering a real culture shift.

Working with ExtraCare’s 19 Retirement Villages and schemes, we are building on the learning of many to ensure the programme helps improve:-

The quality of care and experience of ALL residents of retirement communities

Teamwork, coordination, confidence of staff and collaboration with GPs, primary care teams, hospitals and others

Outcomes for residents enabling more to live well and die well and remain at home more of the time, reducing avoidable hospital admissions.

GSF is specifically tailored to suit the needs of Retirement Villages and includes all residents, not just those considered to be in their final year of life. GSF is designed to build on the good care already being provided in retirement villages so that every resident in their golden years receives gold standard care right up until the end of their life.

GSF helps you to provide residents with care that is proactive - with earlier anticipation of need, more person-centred care, built on advance care planning discussions offered to every resident to help them create the space to clarify their wishes, goals and preferences. The programme also enables providers to deliver care that is systematic, involving everyone with better communication with other health and social professionals resulting in more coordinated care.

Shirley Hall, Head of Innovation and Wellbeing, ExtraCare Charitable Trust, speaking at the GSF Conference, September 2018

Summary of the GSF training programme Plan in Domiciliary Care and Retirement Villages

For the GSF Retirement Village Poster, click here

On the whole, we found just saying that we were an accredited site for GSF was like having a pass key, the DN’s were great as were most GP surgeries, so very much a positive force for us, especially during the pandemic "

New Oscott Retirement Village

"With 75,000 people now living in retirement communities , and numbers expected to rise in future, we’re delighted to be able to support the workforce in this growing sector to deliver proactive, person-centred and systematic, coordinated care.

Extra Care are frontrunners , providing every resident in their golden years with gold standard care right up until the end of life. "

Keri Thomas GSF Founder and Clinical Lead at GSF Award Ceremony 2019

“ GSF has made an enormous difference to us in our Retirement Villages We weren't sure we understood it at first, but now its become part of the culture and we so enthusiastic about it !

Staff are proactively identifying residents who need help early on. It has created a more open culture , so we can can talk more easily about end of life and dying well.”

Shirley Hall Extra Care Retirement Villages

“ During COVID,...

GSF has helped with conversations about the end of life and also ensuring we have preparations in place.

Brunswick Retirement Village

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