1. Purpose
People who depend on home care still need that care when things go wrong: when staff are off sick, when the weather is severe, when a phone system or rosters fail, or when demand suddenly rises. This policy sets out how the Service keeps essential care going through disruption, decides who must be visited first, and gets back to normal afterwards.
The Service must verify this policy against its commissioning contracts, which often set their own business continuity requirements, before adoption.
2. Sources to verify before adoption
- Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, Regulation 17 (good governance): https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/2936/regulation/17
- Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, Regulation 12 (safe care and treatment): https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/2936/regulation/12
- The Service's commissioning contracts and any local authority business continuity requirements
- Local emergency planning and adverse-weather arrangements
3. Scope
This policy applies to:
- events that disrupt the Service's ability to deliver visits
- the steps that keep essential care going during disruption
- everyone with a part to play, from the office and on-call staff to care workers
4. The risks this policy plans for
The Service plans for the disruptions most likely to affect home care, including:
- staff shortage through sickness, including several staff at once
- severe weather, flooding or problems with travel or fuel
- failure of the phone system, rosters, or the call-monitoring system
- loss of the office or its records
- a sudden rise in demand
The Service keeps its own list of risks up to date and reviews it.
5. Deciding who must be visited first
When the Service cannot deliver every visit, it protects the people who would be harmed first. The Service:
- identifies, in advance, the people whose care is critical, for example those who need time-critical medicine, who cannot eat or drink without help, or who have no one else
- records this priority in the care plan, so that in a crisis staff know who must be seen and in what order
- delivers critical visits first and keeps non-critical visits under review
6. Keeping enough staff to cover
The Service builds resilience into its staffing:
- it keeps enough workers, including bank or relief workers, to cover normal absence
- it has an on-call arrangement that can call in cover and redeploy workers to priority visits
- it agrees with workers, in advance, how it will ask for extra help in a crisis
7. Keeping in touch during disruption
During disruption the Service communicates clearly and promptly:
- it tells people receiving care, and their families or representatives, what to expect and when care will come
- it keeps workers informed and supported
- it tells commissioners and, where needed, other services, in line with its contracts
8. Information and systems
The Service makes sure the information needed to keep care going is available even if a system fails:
- staff can reach an up-to-date list of who must be visited, with addresses, access details and key contacts, including when the main system is down
- contact details for staff, people receiving care, families, commissioners and emergency services are kept current and reachable
- records are backed up and protected so they survive the loss of the office
9. The business continuity plan
The Service holds a written business continuity plan that names who does what in a disruption, how decisions are made, and how the steps above are carried out. The plan is kept up to date, shared with the people who need it, and tested so that staff know it works rather than meeting it for the first time in a crisis.
10. Recording and reviewing after an event
After any disruption, the Service records what happened, what care was affected, and how it responded. It reviews how well the plan worked, captures the lessons, and raises improvement actions, tracking them to completion.
11. Audit cadence
The Service checks, on a stated cadence, that:
- the risk list and the business continuity plan are current
- critical people are identified in care plans and would be visited first
- staffing and on-call cover are adequate, and contact lists are current and reachable offline
- the plan has been tested, and lessons from any real disruption have been acted on
The Registered Manager reviews the results and records the improvement actions that follow.