How to make sure people continue to receive care and support

If you are a care provider you should have a business continuity plan to help manage. When you invoke your plan, please email [email protected] with BCP in the subject line. Include a summary of the actions you are taking.

You should:

• make sure your business continuity plan identifies critical and non-critical activities - so you know the things you can stop doing and how long you can stop doing them for
• identify staff skills and qualifications, so that you know who can do tasks if people are sick
• identify a person in your organisation who will check for new guidance and updated advice
• communicate clearly with staff so that you can keep them up to date

You should continue to emphasise routine messages around health and hygiene and focus on the procedures that would normally be deployed for seasonal flu or norovirus outbreaks by:

• continuing to promote messages around hand hygiene
• emphasising that visitors should not attend if they're feeling unwell
• considering preventing any unnecessary visits
• considering additional cleaning routines for areas that are frequently touched, such as door handles or hand rails

If you are concerned that essential maintenance or repairs cannot be carried out and this will impact on your ability to deliver a safe service, please contact [email protected]

Make sure that the information you hold about service users is accurate and up to date. You should:

• make sure next of kin and emergency contact details are up to date
• collect additional contact details in case the primary contact becomes unwell
• make sure care and medication notes are clear and up to date

Review whether there are alternative care plans in place for service users that could be used if the current care is not available. It would be helpful to consider:

• whether support could be provided by the service user’s family or immediate network
• whether the service user could be moved to another location to access care - either another placement within your organisation or an emergency provision set up by the council
• if the service user cannot be moved, what care and support do they need to remain where they are (including any specialist medical support)?

If you are a larger provider with a number of settings or services, please consider how you can share this information internally. Where service users need to be moved, we ask that larger providers consider doing this within the same organisation.

For other settings, we recognise that availability within your service may change on a daily basis. If you think you have spare capacity that you can offer us, please email the Integrated Commissioning Team [email protected] with SERVICE CAPACITY in the subject line.