March 18, 2020

How we’re responding to the COVID-19 outbreak

*Last updated 25 February 2022* 

We’d like to say a big thank you for your patience with us over the last few difficult years as we’ve navigated this storm, changing how we do things to make things safer for everyone. Thanks to the dedication, kindness and strength of our team, our volunteers, our Shared Lives carers, our partners and the people we support, we’ve come through the other side – and we don’t take any of that for granted.

On 24 February 2022 the Government announced that, in England, COVID-19 restrictions have come to an end. Here at PSS, we support some of the people most vulnerable to COVID-19.  We’d like to reassure everyone who uses our services that we’re going to keep on being as safe as we can. Our teams are still following the COVID-19 safety rules that were in place before the Government announcement.

How we’re keeping our staff and the people we support safe 

If you test positive for COVID-19 and you’re due to come and see us

 If you test positive for COVID-19 or you’re not feeling well with COVID-19 symptoms, please let us know as soon as you can. We support some really vulnerable people and we think it’s part of our job to try and keep them and everyone else as healthy and well as possible – so we’re asking people not to come and see us in our offices, centers or community venues while they’re testing positive for COVID-19 or have COVID-19 symptoms.

We’re still testing regularly

All of our staff use lateral flow tests regularly.

Our support teams test every day before coming into work.

Our office-based teams test twice a week before they come into the office.

We’re doing everything we can to make sure our teams can get their hands on tests when they need them.

Our staff are still isolating if they test positive

Our team test regularly to make sure they’re COVID-19 free. If any of our team test positive for COVID-19, they won’t be coming to work – they’ll be staying at home for five days and won’t be able to return to work until they’ve had two consecutive negative lateral flow tests. Our team’s big-hearted and want to do the right thing – but we’re also continuing to pay people as normal when they’re isolating, so nobody’s missing out to keep others safe.

We’re still wearing masks

All of our staff are still wearing masks whenever they’re supporting someone, or when they’re moving around the workplace – whether that’s one our our houses, our offices, our centres and our community venues. We’re also encouraging our teams to keep wearing masks in shops, on public transport and in public places if they can.

 We’re still sanitising

We’re following the same strict cleaning routines as we did at the beginning of the pandemic to help keep those pesky germs at bay in all the places we work.

Questions?

If you’ve got any questions at all about how we’re going to continue handling the pandemic as it develops, please drop us a line. You can email us at tellus@pss.org.uk or you can give us a call and ask to speak to someone in our health and safety team: 0151 702 5555.