Welcome!
Welcome to this week's newsletter, published for adult social care providers, issued on behalf of Devon County Council's Director of Adult Social Care Services and Director of Public Health and NHS Devon’s Chief Nursing Officer.
Vaccination continues to be at the top of our agenda as the national programme is rolled out in accordance with the set priorities. Good progress is being made with the roll-out, but we must all remain vigilant in terms of infection prevention and control.
We are keeping our Provider Engagement Network website as up to date as possible in today’s fast-changing environment so please make use of that online resource.
National social care funding announcement
A new £120 million fund for local authorities to boost adult social care staffing levels was announced on 17 January, read the press release.
NHS Devon mass vaccination briefing
The latest update on mass vaccination roll-out progress from Devon’s Clinical Commissioning Group.
Care homes - updated timeline and vaccinating where there is an outbreak
NHS England has published a letter bringing forward the target date for care home vaccination to be completed to 24 January (instead of the original 31 January target).
It also announced that it is expecting all primary care network local vaccination services to administer the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to residents and staff in the older adult care homes for which the PCN is responsible by the end of this week wherever possible and, at the latest, by the end of next week (Sunday 24 January).
Care homes accessing lateral flow tests
The below are points to note about deliveries of lateral flow device (LFD) tests. Please see additional guidance about personal information contained in returned test kits.
- All care homes are receiving a second order of LFDs in January. (Unrelated to requests for more kits).
- Every call to 119 requesting additional LFDs due to outbreak will be logged and actioned.
- If following an outbreak a home needs extra test kits they should contact 119.
- When the call is placed to 119, this is escalated to the Department of Health and Social Care escalations team which can place an urgent order, typically arriving the next day. Ringing 119 means this request has been received and is being processed. We ask therefore that care homes ring only the once.
- The general guidance to care homes is that they will receive an update on their case within 48 hours. However, requests for more kits following an outbreak are treated as urgent and will typically be processed same day.
- The care home will not receive a call back from the escalations team when the order is placed, but instead will receive an email confirming that an urgent order has been placed.
90 days testing policy
The Government has published a note explaining the policy relating to the 14 - 90 day time period since positive COVID-19 test result. The note provides clarity on section 4.3 of the existing guidance, and does not include any new policy. The note aims to communicate the policy more clearly to acute staff and care homes and provides a step-by-step process to determine whether it is appropriate for the person to be discharged into a normal care home setting without having to enter and isolate in a designated care setting. A PDF version of the note is also attached.
Information about vaccines and lockdown for people with a learning disability and autistic people
NHS England and NHS Improvement have developed a short film for people with learning disabilities and/or autistic people about vaccination. It describes what a vaccine is, how vaccines are made, why you should get a vaccine, whether a vaccine can make you ill and how to decide whether to have a vaccine or not.
And remember to use this guide too: Easy read: National lockdown: Stay at home
The Ask for Ani scheme
The Government has launched The Ask for ANI scheme which allows those at risk or suffering from abuse to discreetly signal that they need help and access support. By asking for ANI, a trained pharmacy worker will offer a private space where they can understand if the victim needs to speak to the police or would like help to access support services such as a national or local domestic abuse helplines.
For more information, please visit the domestic abuse government guidance or email.
Vaccination without vexation - a helpful blog
Anyone with concerns about vaccination can be directed to this blog from Ruth Yates of HC-One.
She and her care home colleagues describe a very positive experience at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
REMINDER
Please remain vigilant regardless of vaccination
We would like care homes to remain vigilant and to not drop their guard with respect to COVID-19 precautions, despite the wider availability of testing and vaccinations.
Vaccination does not alter public health action for the management of COVID-19 including contact tracing, PPE use, social distancing, hand hygiene and cleaning measures.
Prioritising of at-risk groups
The COVID-19 Actuaries Response Group has conducted a review of the logic behind the UK’s vaccine priority ordering.
The review has found that the priority groups, which comprise less than half the UK population, make up 99% of the observed COVID-19 deaths. The top two priority groups alone cover two-thirds of the deaths. For each group, they estimate the number of vaccinations required to prevent one COVID death, finding that it increases rapidly as we move down the priority order.
This document shows the number needed to vaccinate in care homes is 20 vaccinations to prevent one death, compared with other groups in priority 1-4 of between 160 and 600 vaccinations to prevent one death.
DHSC Coronavirus social care update
DHSC has circulated the first Coronavirus Social Care newsletter of 2021, featuring the authorisation by the regulator of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, the continued rollout of the Oxford AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, free COVID-19 PPE for care sector extended to June 2021 and updated COVID-19 guidance for supported living. You can sign up to received regular updates.
Update on CQC's regulatory approach
The CQC have updated their regulatory approach during the pandemic. At the start of the pandemic we paused routine inspections and focused our activity only in response to risk. This was the right thing to do and we have kept this decision under review. In response to the very latest position, we want to be clear that for the time being we will continue to only undertake inspection activity in response to a serious risk of harm or where it supports the system’s response to the pandemic. You can read more information on what this means for providers on the CQC website.
Changes to CQC notification forms
We are making changes to our notification forms to make them easier for you to use and improve the quality of information collected. The death of a service user notification form has now been updated, with other forms being updated soon.
To make sure submitting a notification to us is as easy for you as possible, make sure you are using the latest form either by downloading from our website each time you submit a notification or accessing through the provider portal.
Visit our website for more information on this work and information about what you need to notify CQC about and how you can do it and we’ll let you know through this bulletin as more forms are updated.
Celebrating success
Enabling support is still provided during lockdown, with compliance to current lockdown rules. Pictured below are Made-Well clients with ponies on a trip to woods.
Remember to share your good news stories in this newsletter!
Revisit previous good news stories
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