 5 March 2021
Public: coronavirus (COVID-19) advice for Devon on our website
Please pass this onto district, borough, parish and town councillors as appropriate. The bulletin can be shared as a link by clicking the 'View it as a Web page' link at the top. Find previous bulletins on our web page.
Do it for Devon
Stick with us and keep following the guidance to keep everyone safe and well.
We need the support of local residents and visitors to keep following the lockdown guidelines and you must not leave, or be outside of your home except where necessary. If you do need to leave home, please remember advice and guidance around social distancing, washing hands and sanitising hands regularly, wearing a face covering in enclosed spaces (unless exempt), and avoiding busy places.
Support for businesses welcomed
Devon County Council Leader, Cllr John Hart, welcomed the support for businesses announced on Wednesday 3 March by the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak. Responding to the Budget statement 2021 news, Cllr Hart said:
"We're already taking action to drive our economic recovery in Devon following the pandemic and I am delighted to see the Chancellor detailing national help for our businesses.
"Many of our tourism and hospitality businesses are on their knees and they are such a vital part of our economy. So it's good to see they will get more help on business rates, VAT and other assistance and, more generally, there will be more support for the self-employed.
"I have been calling for the furlough scheme to be extended and I'm glad the Chancellor has now made that commitment. It is also encouraging to see the £20 uplift on Universal Credit continuing.
"And in such a rural county as Devon where many people are so reliant on their cars, I'm also delighted that fuel duty has been frozen."
Latest messages from Steve Brown, Devon’s Director of Public Health
Parents encouraged to allow their children to be tested for COVID-19 at school
Click to watch on YouTube
Steve Brown, Director of Public Health Devon, is encouraging parents to give their consent to allow their children to be tested for coronavirus at school. He said:
“The first step in the government’s roadmap starts next week with all students returning to schools and colleges.
“Students are going to be asked to take a lateral flow test twice a week, and while it’s not mandatory, I really encourage all parents to consent for their children to be tested twice a week.
“Testing students will enable us to identify those who have no symptoms, but are infectious, and so they can isolate immediately, as can their households.
“This will allow us to break the chain of transmission. If we don’t do this, there is a risk that COVID-19 would be transmitted unknowingly within the school.”
Steve Brown is also encouraging all parents of primary, secondary and college-age students, as well as parents with children in pre-schools and nurseries, to also get tested twice a week as well.
To find more information about how to get tested, visit devon.cc/testing.
Public Health Devon figures this week show case rates slightly higher in those aged over 80 and those aged 20 to 59. Case rates are currently highest in East Devon.
Listen to this week’s update by Steve Brown.
Testing will be the cornerstone of our way out of COVID-19
Testing for coronavirus is going to be the cornerstone of our transition back to normal life, Steve Brown, Director of Public Health Devon, has declared.
With schools and colleges opening up again, and restrictions set to gradually ease – subject to the latest data at the time – testing is going to be a vital part of keeping case numbers down, he explains:
"Over coming weeks and months, we are going to see a lot more movement of people. Coronavirus thrives on socialisation, which is why we see case numbers fall during lockdown, when movement and socialising is restricted.
"Taking a test regularly – the rapid tests that give results within the hour – is going to be an absolutely vital part of our way out of the coronavirus pandemic.
"People are now able to order rapid, lateral flow tests to take at home. They’re available to order from the NHS online for home delivery, or they can be collected from national NHS testing sites having booked a collection first.
"Rapid testing is already available at fixed and mobile sites across Devon, and more sites will be set up in coming weeks. People can book tests at our community testing sites via devon.cc/testing. These are for people who show no signs of having the virus.
"Remember, one in every three people with coronavirus do not show symptoms, and could therefore be spreading the virus unknowingly. To beat COVID-19, we need to stop it spreading."
Read the full article on our News Centre.
Plans to ease lockdown met with cautious welcome; Roadmap dates will be subject to tests
We circulated a summary of the 4-step plan, which the Government is calling the 'COVID-19 Roadmap 2021'. If you missed it, you can find a copy on our web page.
The plan has been met with a cautious welcome by leaders in Devon, including Steve Brown, Director of Public Health Devon. He said:
"While it was good to see this week the publication of the Government's roadmap, which does set out dates for restrictions to be eased, it's really important to remember that these dates are 'no earlier than' dates.
"Each step-down will obviously have to look at the science and the data and information, and those dates may well be pushed back if the science tells us the best thing to do is to delay those step-downs. At this stage, the most important thing to do is to continue to follow the national lockdown restrictions."
You can listen to what Steve said in full on our News Centre.
Prevention measures still vital in Devon
People's attitude towards coronavirus, and the parts we all play in getting through this pandemic, are changing as we look ahead to a time without restrictions.
The vaccine roll out to priority groups is helping people see a way out of the pandemic, and a return to normality. But please remember we're not there yet.
“Testing for coronavirus is still a vital and very real necessity right now, especially if you’re in contact with people through the work you do.
"Do not let the vaccine persuade us that testing and other prevention measures are no longer needed," warns Steve Brown, Director of Public Health Devon.
CCG Members' briefing - coronavirus vaccination in Devon
Please see the latest coronavirus vaccination briefing for Members from NHS Devon, Devon’s CCG (Clinical Commissioning Group):
You can view current and previous copies on the Provider Engagement Network (PEN) website
What we can and can't do from Monday 8 March
From Monday 8 March, some of the rules on what you can and cannot do will be changing as lockdown begins to slowly ease.
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You will be allowed to spend time in outdoor public spaces for recreation on your own, with one other person, or with your household or support bubble. This means you can sit down for a drink or picnic. You must continue to maintain social distance from those outside your household. This is in addition to outdoor exercise, which is already permitted.
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Schools and colleges will re-open for all pupils, and they will be able to return to face-to-face education.
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Wraparound childcare can reopen and other children’s activities can restart for all children where it is needed to enable parents to work, attend education, seek medical care or attend a support group. Vulnerable children can attend childcare and other children’s activities in all circumstances.
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Students on practical courses at English universities will be able to return to take part in practical teaching and assessments and access specialist facilities so they can complete their courses.
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Care home residents will be able to have one regular named indoor visitor, providing they are tested beforehand, wear personal protective equipment and avoid close contact.
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There will continue to be restrictions on international travel. Holidays will not be a permitted reason to travel. Those seeking to leave the UK must complete an outbound declaration of travel form ahead of departure.
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Those who have been identified as 'Clinically Extremely Vulnerable' are advised not to attend work or education settings until at least Wednesday 31 March.
No further significant changes will be made on Monday 8 March and restrictions requiring you to stay at home will remain in place.
Later changes, including from Monday 29 March, are set out in the Government's roadmap, and we will summarise them in this email nearer the time.
 More community testing sites roll out across Devon
More areas of Devon are benefitting from community testing to help identify people unknowingly spreading coronavirus because they are carrying it without showing any symptoms.
Rapid testing sites have been rolled out in East Devon and West Devon as areas of the county currently with the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases.
Our new state-of-the-art mobile testing centres visit
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Exmouth's Foxholes car park on Saturdays and Tuesdays
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Axminster’s West Street short stay car park on Sundays and Wednesdays
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Honiton’s Blackdown House car park on Mondays and Thursdays
Our second mobile testing centre is now making weekly visits to:
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Tavistock’s Riverside car park on Mondays and Thursdays
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Okehampton’s Mill Road car park on Tuesdays and Fridays
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Ivybridge’s Leonards Road car park on Wednesdays and Saturdays
A fixed community testing centre has also opened at Exe Valley Leisure Centre on Bolham Road in Tiverton, staffed by Mid Devon District Council.
Community testing is also available in Exeter at County Hall on Topsham Road and in Barnstaple at the Civic Centre.
Another site is planned to open in Newton Abbot soon.
These free rapid tests are recommended to be taken twice a week by anyone without coronavirus symptoms who must leave home to attend work or volunteer, and people who are in contact with vulnerable individuals. Parents of children at nursery, primary and secondary school, and of college-age students, are all encouraged to use the community testing facilities. They are quick, easy to book and the results are back within an hour via text or email. If you test positive, you must self-isolate for ten full days to avoid transmitting the virus to anyone else.
The latest information about where and how to access testing is available on our website.
People with learning disabilities prioritised for vaccines
People who are on a GP register for learning disabilities will now be prioritised for a coronavirus vaccination, following updated advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI). It's because they are at greater risk of severe illness from coronavirus and need to be protected as soon as possible.
It means that at least 150,000 more people with learning disabilities will be offered the vaccine quicker, which is great news.
Reminder to students and commuters to stay safe when travelling
Devon County Council is reminding students and commuters to think about how they can keep themselves and others safe on their commute to school or work.
Supporting children and families
Everything you need to know for school on Monday 8 March
Schools and colleges in Devon will reopen for face-to-face teaching for all pupils from Monday 8 March and we are working with headteachers to ensure this will be done as safely as possible. Our schools are experienced at managing risk and are well practiced at keeping staff, children and their families safe in line with Government COVID-19 guidelines.
We are proud of the way our schools have come together to navigate the significant upheavals of the last year successfully, working to keep everyone safe and support our children and young people.
Read our Special bulletin on everything you need to know for school on Monday 8 March
Food vouchers over the Easter Holidays
Our holiday food voucher scheme is a way of providing funds to ensure families of children who are eligible for free school meals during term time are able to purchase food over the holidays, when schools are closed.
The offer over the Easter period will be similar to that provided at Christmas and through the February half term week. Support will be through vouchers (£15 per week per child) which can be redeemed at a range of supermarkets. For families who are not able to access a supermarket online or in person, a food parcel will be available. The voucher scheme will continue to work alongside other council hardship funds, enabling a package of support (such as utilities, travel, and access to advice services) to be offered to applicants, in tandem with food.
Schools update: testing
Secondary, primary and nursery schools are testing staff twice a week and within the next week or so private early years settings will also be provided with testing kits for staff to use at home. Secondary schools are well prepared and have already started testing pupils.
When returning to their school or college, pupils will be offered three lateral flow tests spaced three to five days apart (minimum three days). This is so students have undertaken some testing in a supervised setting, and have had the chance to familiarise themselves with self-swabbing. Following the three initial tests, they will be provided with home kits to test at home twice a week. Families of pupils will also shortly be able to access kits to test at home twice a week.
Public Health Nursing frontline response to the current lockdown
Public Health Nursing has continued to maintain support and robust line of sight to the most vulnerable families and young people. Health visitors are completing targeted antenatal appointments, and face-to-face contacts for all new births have been reinstated from 1 September 2020, with home visits where capacity allows. From February 2021 we have ensured that those babies who were born in the first lockdown are having a face-to-face contact for their one-year review, so that we can robustly assess and identify any unmet need.
Community clinic appointments have continued across Devon to offer face-to-face appointments to families delivered on a needs-led basis.
The Vulnerable Pregnancies Pathway has now been implemented across the whole of Devon from January, which supports partnership working. This Pathway will provide support to our unborn children and children up to two years, set in a whole family context. This will lead to:
- better identification and prevention of neglect
- helping reduce children coming into care
- better support for children in care and care leavers
- protecting and supporting children where there is domestic or sexual violence and abuse.
The second phase is developing an Enhanced Integrated Support Programme called HUG (Helping Us Grow). This is an intensive programme delivered in partnership with health visiting and children's centres for the most vulnerable to improve health outcomes. We are hoping to launch this later this year.
School nurses have continued to provide packages of support to children, young people and families referred into the service. The school nurses working with Young Devon and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) developed additional resources to promote resilience and provide mental health support.
Our Public Health Nursing Team (PHN) met with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspector to discuss a transitional monitoring approach. This is a strengthened approach to monitoring, based on specific existing key lines of enquiry (KLOEs), so that the CQC can continually monitor risk in the service. Feedback will be provided to the service, however this is not an inspection and PHN will not receive a rating.
Early Help Update
Early Help continues to provide support to families through lockdown across our daily triages to ensure a multi-agency coordinated response to families in need. We continue to maintain partnership focus on the Devon Children and Families Partnership's priorities around hidden harm and neglect.
Applications for the Winter Hardship Grant are still available to families to support with a one-off payment of £90. If you are working with families that are experiencing financial hardship this winter, please contact Early Help so that they receive this and other financial support to improve their situation.
The criteria set by Early Help is as follows:
- you are a family (at least two people where at least one person is either pre-birth or up to 18 years old)
- you are not eligible for hardship grant funding through your district council or you have not yet applied
- you are experiencing financial hardship linked to or independent of COVID-19 (e.g. unemployed, furloughed, being made redundant)
- you need financial help to buy food or to pay utility bills.
You can get in touch with Early Help by contacting one of the following mailboxes:
If you are not sure which locality your family is located in please contact any one of these emails and include their location in your opening message.
Barnes Children’s Home – Ofsted inspection
Barnes, our children's home in Tiverton, has five bedrooms, three of which are registered with Ofsted. On Tuesday 9 and Wednesday 10 February an Ofsted inspector undertook a two-day virtual assurance visit for Barnes. During COVID-19 restrictions Ofsted is undertaking assurance visits which do not result in a grading, so there are no changes to previous gradings.
Feedback was positive. All previous requirements and recommendations have been met and no new ones were set from this visit, which is a good outcome.
Ambitious plans to boost support for Devon’s special needs children
A radical plan to bring Devon’s school improvement services and support for special needs children back in-house has been unveiled.
Cabinet will consider the plan on Wednesday 10 March.
It entails the authority taking responsibility for some 200 staff when its current contract with providers Babcock ends. The contract is worth £8.8 million a year.
One of the key aims of the move is to integrate all Devon’s support for children in the county with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). This is in response to the national reforms that were introduced in 2014 that required much closer cooperation between education, health and social care providers.
Nearly 98 per cent of Devon families get their school preference
A total of 97.7 per cent of families have been offered one of their four preferences. In all, 91.5 per cent of the families who applied have been offered their first preference school with 4.9 per cent allocated their second preference, 1.2 per cent their third preference and 0.1 per cent their fourth preference.
Care home residents to be allowed one regular visitor
Care home residents will be able to have one regular indoor visitor from Monday 8 March as part of the Government's roadmap to ease lockdown restrictions in England.
A single, named visitor can hold hands indoors with their relative or friend in a care home, and make repeat visits under carefully designed conditions to keep residents, staff and visitors safe.
They will be tested prior to each visit and need to wear personal protective equipment (PPE) as well as avoid close contact, such as hugging.
Visiting is a crucial part of maintaining quality of life for residents, but it inevitably brings infection risk. Every home and every circumstance may vary, depending upon the risk of exposure to coronavirus on vulnerable residents and care home staff. So please check with the care home before visiting to understand whether visits are permitted right now, and what they require for a safe visit.
Inspiration from vaccination – a Devon nurse reassuring his patients in verse
Nurse Chris Gibson, who works at the vaccination centre at Sherborne House in
Newton Abbot, has written a poem to reassure patients.
“We see the people behind the statistics. Everybody has a story to tell,” said Chris, who has worked for the NHS for over 40 years.
"People come, we see them in a queue and then they come to the table and they tell us things; personal things, sad things, happy things. In two minutes you can learn a lot about a person.”
You can read Chris's poem on NHS Devon Clinical Commissioning Group's website.
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Proxy voting in local elections for those self-isolating
Residents who need to self-isolate because they test positive for coronavirus or are identified as a close contact of someone who has, will still be able to vote in the upcoming local elections on Thursday 6 May through new emergency proxy voting measures.
The new legislation will allow anyone who is self-isolating due to COVID-19 to access an emergency proxy vote, up to 5.00pm on election day.
As usual, anyone can also secure a postal vote in advance of the May elections. The deadline for all postal voting applications is 5.00pm on Tuesday 20 April. Anyone who wants to vote by post is encouraged to apply to do so as early as possible and not wait until the deadline.
The Government has published a plan setting out guidance on how the polls will be delivered in a COVID-19 secure and effective way.
 Second edition of Devon Together newspaper
We have teamed up with NHS Devon Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and Devon and Cornwall Police to produce a second edition of a free newspaper, called Devon Together.
It's filled with important news and information regarding the coronavirus pandemic in Devon, including how to get a vaccination and where our community testing centres are located.
It's been created to bring information about coronavirus to people who tend not to receive their news digitally. We produced a first edition last summer and were pleased with the feedback we received from residents who were unable to access news online and therefore rely on newspapers.
We've published it with colleagues at Archant, and they're distributing it over the next few weeks via their newspapers, Royal Mail, and local supermarkets.
Although it’s designed as a printed newspaper, there's a digital version as well, however it may not be fully accessible to anyone using assistive technology such as a screen reader.
REMINDER: Funding available to help communities
Grants of up to £700 are available to help voluntary and community groups tackle the social and economic impacts of the virus outbreak and help those who are most vulnerable in their communities.
For more information about applying, the application form and the terms and conditions visit Devon County Council's website.
Devon Pension Fund net-zero investment pledge
The Devon Pension Fund has pledged that its portfolio of investments will be net-zero by 2050 at the latest. The Devon Pension Fund administers the pension scheme for the majority of Devon’s public sector, including emergency services and Local Government.
In the short-term, the Fund has also committed to invest over £200 million in renewable energy infrastructure funds via the Brunel Pension Partnership.
It follows a meeting of the Investment and Pension Fund Committee last Friday, where the committee members signed up to a commitment drawn up by the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change.
Read the full article on our News Centre.
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Plymouth and South Devon Freeport will boost jobs and opportunity
A new freeport in Plymouth and South Devon has been given the go ahead by the Government, unlocking million pounds of funding for the area.
The bid to become a freezone by Plymouth City Council, in partnership with Devon County Council and South Hams District Council, includes sites at Langage Energy Zone and Sherford Business Park as well as Devonport South Yard.
After-hours start-up programme launches in Barnstaple
A fully-funded, after-hours support programme aimed specifically at helping local people start and grow a business launches at the Node Enterprise Centre in Barnstaple.
Free Government-funded training courses available to 250 adults in the South West
An additional 250 learner places have been announced on the #Train4Tomorrow Digital bootcamps which are open to adults across the region.
 Support the vaccine roll out via your social media
During the pandemic social media has been a vital tool for people to connect and share updates with their loved ones. And now the power of Facebook and Instagram is being used by the Government and the NHS for people to show their support for the vaccine roll-out.
To add one of the COVID-19 vaccine frames to your Facebook profile picture via a desktop, go to the profile picture frames page, search ‘NHS Covid Vaccine’ frames and select the one you want to use, then click ‘Use as Profile Picture’ in the bottom right of the screen to save.
If you're using the Facebook app just open your profile and click your profile picture, click ‘Add frame' and search ‘NHS Covid Vaccine’ frames and select the one you want to use, then click ‘Use as Profile Picture’ to save.
To use one of the COVID-19 vaccine stickers on your Instagram story, add a photo or video of your choosing, then tap the ‘add media’ button or swipe up to add stickers from GIPHY and search ‘NHS Covid Vaccine’ to scroll through the options and select a sticker you want to use, then position this on your story image or video and don't forget to use the hashtags #CovidVaccine and #WeAreDevon when you post it.
By pulling together across the Council, with our partners and our communities, we are doing everything we can to help us all through this incredibly difficult time. Thank you to you and your community and stay safe and well.
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