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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.
If you get the chance, please visit the Workforce Development part of the Provider Engagement Network (PEN) website. It has just been updated and the team responsible want to make it as helpful as possible based on your feedback.
Remember that we do our best to keep the content and structure of our PEN website up-to-date and your suggestions how to improve the site are always welcome.
New national investment and Every Action Counts
infection prevention resources
The government has announced that adult social care will be given over £250 million extra to continue coronavirus protections as stated in the press release, along with the supply of free PPE for the rest of this financial year as previously communicated.
The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) has now adapted the NHS Every Action Counts infection prevention and control resources for social care settings.
The Every Action Counts resources include posters, digital key cards and hints and tips, supporting compliance and awareness, leadership, morale and wellbeing, training and operational interventions. The Every Action Counts toolkit has also been adapted to support adult social care providers to use the resources effectively.
Latest guidance updates
The overview of adult social care guidance on coronavirus
information has been updated in line with recent advice for outbreaks in care homes that contain cases of the Delta variant.
Admission and care of people in care homes
How to protect care home residents and staff has been updated to clarify that admissions into a care home from the community are able to take a test up to 72 hours in advance and to include Delta variant as a variant of concern.
If test results confirm a variant of concern in the outbreak (other than Alpha and/or Delta variant) then the outbreak restrictions should remain in place until whole home recovery testing has been completed after a period of 28 days with no new cases.
Demonstrating your COVID-19 vaccination status
How to get the NHS COVID Pass and demonstrate your coronavirus status when travelling abroad. It's been updated to reflect that from 21 June 2021, the NHS service to demonstrate your COVID-19 vaccination status, is now called the NHS COVID Pass.
Discharge to Assess Funding changes
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Health & Social Care mandated the introduction of Discharge to Assess pathways for individuals leaving an acute hospital.
These pathways covered support for individuals returning home with a package of care and those discharged into a care home.
To enable local areas to fund these pathways the cost of this has been met by central government and has been extended a number of times since being introduced in March 2020.
From Thursday 1 July 2021, the Discharge to Assess pathway will reduce from the current maximum of six weeks to instead cover care up to a maximum of four weeks. This extension will cease in its entirety from Friday 1 October 2021.
Individuals will continue to be supported under the DTA pathway, and when discussions take place with individuals they will be made aware that the funding is short term in order to support their discharge, longer term assessment and any onward care journey. This will take place as soon as it is identified they have met their rehab goals or a longer-term funding assessment has been concluded (and in all cases within four weeks).
NHS and Social Care Commissioners acknowledge that by exception an extension to this period may be necessary, either to ensure goals have been met or due to challenges with assessment capacity, and in any such case commissioners will ensure payment arrangements continue automatically until the individual has been supported to exit the pathway.
For the duration of this central government funded extension, the existing enhanced discharge rates will be maintained.
Local 'Vaccinations, fertility, pregnancy and breastfeeding' webinar
NHS clinicians in Devon will host a webinar on Monday 5 July from 6.00pm until 7.00pm to give information and address concerns regarding the vaccine and fertility, pregnancy and breastfeeding.
Please register to attend.
A recording of the webinar will be made available after the event.
Wakes and commemorative events information assets
New assets are now available as part of Public Health England's 'Step 3 Update' campaign including resources and information on commemorative events and wakes and a British Sign Language explainer video.
Adult social care Infection Control and Testing Fund
(April – June 2021) second reporting point
Please note that the deadline for the second reporting point is Friday 16 July at 12.00noon. A link to the report form was sent to you on 24 June. Please complete and submit by the deadline to allow Devon County Council (DCC) to report to government. Please note that completion of the monitoring forms is a requirement of the grant agreement.
Failure to comply will impact on your eligibility for any further funding through this grant.
If you confirmed via their R1 report that you had fully spent the grants please note that DCC has emailed separately asking to confirm that this is correct.
For any queries and to return the monitoring form, please contact us.
Capacity Tracker - updates
Care home Q&A sessions
The South West Capacity Tracker lead - Katherine Emerton, is holding Q&A sessions on Wednesdays: 7 July and 14 July from 8.30am until 9.30am. If you would like to participate, please use this link.
Care homes - Do you know who your identified clinical lead is?
There is a question in the monthly Infection, Prevention and Control funding section of the Capacity Tracker asking if you know who your clinical lead is. Please update it as soon as possible. The Capacity Tracker team is following up any cases where the answer is ‘No’. Please note that a list of clinical leads is published on the PEN website.
If you have any queries about the above or the Capacity Tracker, please contact Capacity Tracker Support Centre on 0191 691 3729 or via email.
'Variants of concern' assets
Public Health England has also made new resources available for Variants of Concern campaigns including new translations.
South Asian vaccination messages
The BBC Asian Network has created some great content on pregnancies and vaccines available in Urdu, Punjabi, Tamil, Sylheti and Gujarati.
Compulsory vaccination of care home staff - Q&As
Regulations have now been laid before Parliament and the 16-week grace period will begin once these are passed and signed before the summer recess.
Please see this stakeholder Q&As for further information about the regulations.
We are expecting detailed guidance to be drafted over coming weeks, with involvement from ADASS and other stakeholders in its development.
Research findings webinars
The International Long-term Care Policy Network is hosting two webinars at which international research findings will be presented.
- The Learning from COVID-19: NIHR ARC research on visiting in care homes webinar on Tuesday 6 July from 1.00pm to 2.30pm brings together practitioners from health and social care and all those interested in learning from the pandemic to support older people and staff living and working in care homes.
- The COVID-19, vaccinations and immunity in care homes: emerging evidence from the VIVALDI (UK) and COVID-19 immunity study webinar on Monday 12 July at 2.00pm will provide an overview of emerging evidence on the effectiveness of vaccinations among the care home population and will showcase two studies from Canada and the UK.
ADASS letter to the PM on social care reform
The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) together with the Local Government Association, Think Local Act Personal, Social Care Institute for Excellence, Social Care Future and Care Providers Alliance has this week written to the Prime Minister, Chancellor and the Secretary of State to urge the Government to publish its promised proposals for the future of adult social care before the parliamentary summer recess on Thursday 22 July. The government has previously committed in the Queen’s Speech to publish its proposals before the end of year.
Celebrating success - CareYourWay's Client Poem Contest
In June this year, CareYourWay (a domiciliary care provider based in Totnes) launched a poem competition and invited their clients to express their emotions on paper. There were many entries and Stevie M. won the first prize. Stevie wrote about appreciating small things we have in our life and that they matter most. You can read her poem below.
Here is Stevie holding her trophy.
 Stevie's Poem
Great grandma, telling of as a small child of seeing Queen Victoria,
Grandad a Mounted officer in the police, Mother a Wren, Dad a soldier. Lifetimes shared and loved but never lost.
Open sided Dust carts, pop lorry’s laden heavy with wooden crates, brush men at the door, only a few hours of television by posh folk in shirt and tie, rationing had ended, millions of lives lost, but films of war and victory.
Offices filled with secretaries and clerks, typing on manual machines.
Telephone operators on busy switchboards. Short codes and numbers button A and button B lives shared, friendships formed, not forgotten.
Now witnessing life of generations, all that history they have seen and lived, all my own memories and experiences, joys and tears and loves. Now I wonder, sit, look out the window, and dream were once ran and leaped and climbed. So now years later, cars with chips, and the world over heating, the world still has wars, the greedy still want more, BIGGER is always better! We can only eat one meal, nothing learnt, if only we could take time for one another.
Remember to share your good news stories in this newsletter
Has your support helped transformed someone’s life? Have you got innovative practice to share? Send us your celebratory photos and words and we’ll help share good practice.
Revisit previous good news stories
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