The Isle of Wight council are currently carrying out a “resilience planning exercise” and asking volunteers whether they would be willing to offer their support at care homes, as the industry faces an “emergency” on the Island.
Volunteers who helped with community activities since the start of the pandemic have been asked whether they’d be up for providing supporting roles at care homes.
Love: “We are running out of care staff”
As reported by News OnTheWight earlier this month, the Cabinet member for Adult Social Care, Karl Love, urged former carers to return to the profession to help, “Our Island people need you all now”, adding “we are running out of care staff and facing a real emergency”.
Care homes struggling to provide usual level of service
An email sent to volunteers explains that care homes are “struggling to provide their usual high level of service” and the Isle of Wight council are trying to find out how many people would be willing to volunteer in local cares homes if needed.
The kind of roles they will be expected to assist with include:
- Serving meals
- Assisting people with their meals
- Helping with food preparation
- Being a room monitor
- Checking people are OK and providing refreshments
Concerns raised
Concerns have been raised in the industry that whilst staff in care homes will be forced to have the Covid-19 vaccination when compulsory jabs are introduced in October, volunteers might not need to be vaccinated.
News OnTheWight got in touch with Community Action IW, who sent out the email, to find out whether this was the case. We asked,
- Roughly how many people did the email go to?
- Will volunteers be required to be vaccinated in order to help at care homes?
- Are any form of background checks (DBS) carried out?
- What’s caused the need for volunteers to be carrying these duties out?
A spokesperson from Community Action IW didn’t answer the questions, but told News OnTheWight that her email had been “a general enquiry to gauge interest”.
Pushed over to the council
Following a week of chasing for responses to our very straightforward and seemingly simple questions, we were bumped over to the Isle of Wight council.
Although they got a response to us fairly swiftly, the council chose to ignore three of the four questions and instead simply offered this statement below,
As part of ongoing resilience planning activities overseen by the COVID response Affected Residents Cell (managed by the council), and working closely with the Island’s independent care providers, a review of existing resilience plans has been requested that would also plan for a ‘what if’ worst case scenario. All independent care providers have business continuity plans should COVID impact on their staffing and these look at what would be required to address a number of possible factors should they occur.
The activities being undertaken to gauge community capacity support is merely to explore and to look at possibilities should a worst case planning need occur after all other relevant steps have been explored first. You will be aware that there has been use of community volunteer capacity during COVID to support with a range of needs in the community, and the council is working hard to continue to work with independent care providers to plan for any resilience needs that would need to maintain critical support to our most vulnerable in the community should the need arise.
The council is grateful for the continued response from those in the community that have offered their support and this continues to help to ensure plans remain appropriate in terms of ensuring low level support needs may be met in a care setting, which in turn may free up personal care staff to support those personal care needs with the most vulnerable.
No decision has been taken to deploy any community volunteers in care provider settings and this remains a continued resilience planning exercise.
The question of vaccinations and DBS checking was put back to the officers and the response we received was,
“I put those two questions to the relevant staff and the answer I’ve had back is that we always follow any government guidelines.”
It’s not clear why the officers won’t simply say yes or no. Some might consider their choice of response obfuscation.
Yes, volunteers must be vaccinated
Interestingly despite the council not wanting to answer the question, a News OnTheWight reader who works in a care home got in touch with us, and another left a comment, pointing to the Government report published earlier this month called, Coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccination of people working or deployed in care homes: operational guidance.
In this report under the section titled Volunteers it reads:
Volunteers All volunteers who enter the care residence will need to show proof of vaccination or exemption, unless they are under 18
Contractors doing repairs or maintenance
The Government report also states that :
If work is required inside the care home, then individuals carrying out maintenance will need to show proof of vaccination or medical exemption.
However, if urgent maintenance work is required in the event of a risk to life or continuity of care, workers are exempt from these requirements.
This could include (but is not limited to):
• failure or breakdown of the gas, electricity or water supply
• dangerous electrical fault
• serious damage caused by fire, flood, storm or explosion
• burst water service
• serious roof leak
• gas leak
• any fault or damage in the care home that makes the care home unsafe or insecure
• a serious fault in a lift or staircaseIt is the manager’s responsibility to use their professional judgement to determine whether a situation requires urgent maintenance work.
Managers will be expected to keep a log of all urgent maintenance work during which people entered the home without showing proof of vaccination or medical exemption, and a short description of the incident for record keeping purposes.
Compulsory vaccinations for care staff
The new ruling means anyone working in a CQC-registered care home in England must have had two Covid-19 vaccines from October, unless they have a medical exemption.
Article edit
7.32pm 20th Aug 2021 – Link and reference to Gov report for volunteers and contractors added
Image: Claudia van Zyl under CC BY 2.0
