20/3/20
Hearth COVID-19 Action Plan
The Hearth team has developed an action plan to respond to and plan for the Coronavirus. Importantly, we will continue to adapt and respond to the impact of the Coronavirus as it spreads through our community. This is just the beginning. The following actions from our plan may be of particular interest: –
- Business continuity – We are continuing to deliver the essential service of disability support with much heightened practices, to take every step to maintain the safety of our participants and support workers, including a Hearth “home visit checklist” to be followed to build new habits and practices.
- Extra support – Hearth has ordered 1,800 surgical masks and 1,000 bottles of hand sanitiser which are planned to arrive within the next 3 weeks and will be delivered to our participant homes and support workers. This has been in response to the identified need and the challenge to source these items which is causing great stress to our clients.
- Contingency planning – Hearth is building a contingent workforce, increasing recruitment to support the need to have back-up supports matched across our participants, working on the assumption that all support workers will likely contract the Coronavirus and need to be quarantined for at least 2 weeks.
- Understanding what matters – Checking in on the phone with all clients to understand how they are feeling, what we can do to support them that may be outside the ordinary course of business and importantly, starting to support contingency planning.
- In-home support resources – Hearth is developing a bank of resources to assist families and support workers who are having to spend a lot more time in the home across the next few months – This will be made available in the next week or so.
Justin Scanlon | Hearth Support Services
