COVID-19: residential care, supported living and home care guidance

Department of Health and Social Care has published guidance for provision of various social care services now.

COVID-19: residential care, supported living and home care guidance

had a quick look through on Friday and this was what caught my eye.

Care home providers are advised to work with local authorities to establish plans for mutual aid, including sharing of the workforce between providers, and with local primary and community health services providers, and with deployment of volunteers where that is safe to do so.

Care home providers are invited to consider ways in which they can contribute to keeping people safe across the local area, including the following where possible:

• use tools to report capacity for bed vacancies (such as the Capacity Tracker or Care Pulse) to support system resilience
• increase the use of Skype and other tools for secure virtual conference calls, to ensure advice from GPs, acute care staff, and community health staff can be given

To minimise the risk of transmission, care home providers are advised to review their visiting policy, by asking no one to visit who has suspected COVID-19 or is generally unwell, and by emphasising good hand hygiene for visitors. Contractors on site should be kept to a minimum. The review should also consider the wellbeing of residents, and the positive impact of seeing friends and family.

If a resident has symptoms of COVID-19
Care homes are not expected to have dedicated isolation facilities for people living in the home but should implement isolation precautions when someone in the home displays symptoms of COVID-19 in the same way that they would operate if an individual had influenza. If isolation is needed, a resident’s own room can be used. Ideally the room should be a single bedroom with en suite facilities.

Steps that supported living providers can take to maintain service delivery
To maintain service delivery, providers of supported living are advised to:

• review their list of clients, and ensure that it is up to date, including the levels of informal support available to individuals. Providers should consider how they could share this information electronically, if they receive a legitimate request, including what the dataset might be.

• work with local authorities to identify people who fund their own care and help them to establish the levels of informal support available. It may be helpful for providers to share the number of hours of care they provide to help with planning, but they will want to satisfy themselves that it is lawful for them to share that information.

Steps for home care providers to maintain delivery of care
Home care providers are advised to:

• review their list of clients, and ensure that it is up to date, including levels of informal support available to individuals. Providers should consider how they could benefit from sharing this information electronically with local partners, if they receive a legitimate request, including what the dataset might be

• work with local authorities to establish plans for mutual aid, taking account of their business continuity plans, and consider arrangements to support sharing of the workforce between home care providers, and with local primary and community services providers; and with deployment of volunteers where that is safe to do so

• note the arrangements that local authorities, CCGs, and NHS 111 are putting in place to refer vulnerable people self-isolating at home to volunteers who can offer practical and emotional support

• Home care providers will routinely be procuring personal protective equipment (PPE) such as gloves and aprons. In addition, there will be a free issue of PPE to support adult social care providers (residential care and domiciliary care) to comply with the updated advice on use of PPE to support management of symptomatic patients presenting in these settings. This will be issued from the pandemic influenza stockpile. Arrangements will be put in place for adult social care providers to access further PPE as necessary.