Meeting your responsibilities

Care provider owners and managers have a great many responsibilities to different client groups, employers, stakeholders and regulators. Below you will find links to support these relationships. Optimum will add to these as they develop new initiatives or partners make them aware of other resources that are available to you.

Guide to safe staffing

This new Skills for Care guide to safe staffing explains what the CQC will inspect around safe staffing and will help you decide and maintain safe staffing levels, embed safe recruitment practices and ensure your staff are safe and competent.

Download the Skills for Care guide to safe staffing [PDF]

Safeguarding

Nottingham City and Nottinghamshire County have fully revised and combined their Adult Safeguarding Multi-agency Procedures for Raising a Concern and Referring and accompanying guidance. These two online documents describe how all colleagues can make a safeguarding referral as well as offering practical guidance about identifying and working with different types of abuse.

The Summary of Changes note, (attached – can this be embedded?) shows how the procedures and guidance have been updated to reflect current best practice as well as incorporating changes brought about by the recent introduction of the Data Protection Act 2018, providing a comprehensive yet accessible set of tools to ensure people can be as safe from harm and risk of abuse as possible.

All staff should be aware of and conversant with these documents. The procedures and guidance can be found using the following links to the respective Adult Safeguarding Board websites:

Regulatory responsibilities

Responsibilities to your client group and their families
Registration with CQC
Contracts held with Local Authorities
Responsibilities to your workforce

Brexit – employer toolkit for the EU Settlement Scheme

This employer toolkit will equip employers with the right tools and information to support EU citizens and their families on the EU Settlement Scheme.

View Skills for Care report for the DHSC on the nationality of the adult social care workforce [PDF]

View Skills for Care report on the adult social care sector and workforce in the East Midlands [PDF]

Deaths in Care Homes

NEMS has modified its guidance to its clinicians regarding attendance for verification of expected deaths in nursing and care home.

The main change is that following the withdrawal of EMAS from attending such deaths and in line with BMA guidance and English law it may be deemed unnecessary to attend an expected death in a Nursing or Care Home for verification. The clinician will have taken detailed background information from the available medical record and clear details regarding the death from the onsite nursing/care staff before the decision not to visit to verify is made. This does not affect death certification which will still be required from the deceased's GP in the normal way.

BMA guidance can be accessed on the BMA website.