Ridge Care Group
Ridge Care Group (RCG) is committed to ensuring the health, safety and welfare of all our employees, services users and other visitors to our premises. As an organisation, we are well equipped to keep fully abreast of developments relating to the continued spread of Coronavirus (COVID-19) across the UK. We are routinely monitoring developments, reviewing our protocols, and preparing appropriate responses as the situation evolves.
As a company operating in the adult social care sector, it is both paramount and fundamental that we ensure the highest standards of hygiene and cleanliness are maintained, alongside ensuring all necessary required provisions are put in place for our staff and service users. RCG continues to work closely with Health Authorities, Local Authorities, UKHCA/Scottish Care and Care Regulators in order to protect colleagues and people we care for whilst maintaining effective service delivery.
As care providers, we work in a collaborative and multiagency way to mitigate the spread and contain the risk of the virus. Over the past months, we have continued to follow the recommendations of the World Health Organisation, Local Authorities, Public Health England and Health Protection Scotland closely. As part of this process, we have conducted assessments of COVID-19 related risks in connection with our work environments and have put in place our own stringent procedures to ensure we are able to minimise any existing risks.
To prepare for any staff shortage, our Business Contingency Plans are robust and tested to ensure reliability.
These are basic but effective ways we follow to help prevent the infection’s spread including:
Where social distancing guidelines cannot be followed in relation to a particular activity, as part of the risk assessment process, we have considered whether that activity needs to continue for our business to operate. If it does, we will take mitigating actions to reduce the risks of transmission.
One step we have taken is to boost our recruitment efforts, taking on board additional carers to manage an increased demand on our services. As a result, we have successfully been able to cover sickness and isolation.
We supply all of our staff with full Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and they are provided the opportunity at any time to resupply as they see fit. As a company, we recognised from an early stage the potential for there to be a shortage of PPE due to an increase in global demand and a shortage across supply chains. Building strong relationships with a selection of suppliers, fortunately we have been able to create our own supply chain, through which we have been able to supply all of our care homes and carers with the PPE they require. Additionally, we have installed hygiene stations across all premises.
Working with the Local Authorities we have improved our testing capacity, which has helped to prevent and control outbreaks allowing us to take the right steps at the right time to reduce the spread of the virus and to protect the most vulnerable. Also, working closely with the NHS and coinciding with our limitations in place surrounding care home visits, RCG has ensured that all our care homes now support the NHS Test and Trace, keeping a record of current and previous residents, visitors and staff.
Our team will continue to review all arrangements on a regular basis to ensure they reflect current Government, health organisations and other changing circumstances. We will also continue to consult and work with our employees and other organisations to safeguard all those who are cared for and those who work at RCG.
All our risk assessments and control measures will remain under constant review, alongside any updates to the Government. Ridge Care Group staff will be provided with regular updates and any necessary training in relation to the control measures to be implemented and we will continue to work with our staff, contractors and customers to find further ways in which we can make improvements to the way we are managing the risks of COVID-19.