Care Home Crisis Management

If you don’t have a crisis management or contingency plan in place, then things will only go from bad to worse.

With Future Care Consulting’s Crisis Management service, you can activate our help if you hit a crisis. Our Crisis Management services include:

Project Management

We will create a COVID-19 management action plan, communicate it to all stakeholders, and remain responsible for the plan.

Management and Staffing

We will make sure you continue to have the right staffing levels and management:

We’ll arrange interim management to replace your registered manager if they are not available for 28 days or more. We can usually appoint an interim manager from our pool of experienced management staff and have them in place within a matter of days.

If staffing pressures move towards a critical point – potentially seriously compromising the safety of residents, or risking the service’s continued operation –  we can work with our network of employment agencies to source and place the staff that you need to avoid a crisis.

If you require non-experienced staff, we can implement safe recruitment practices, including obtaining DBS fast-track checks, references, and right-to-work checks – and providing the proof of those checks. Every member of your staff will be set up to complete the Skills for Care online induction or any other online induction programme you use.

   Stakeholder management

Staff

We’ll set up and manage a single source of messaging for all your staff so that you can stay in touch and keep them up to date with any changes. We can facilitate video conference calls, WhatsApp message groups, and email messaging to keep those lines of communication with staff open.

Residents

We will manage your verbal and written messaging. We will liaise with each manager or senior staff member in charge and provide them with consistent messages for distribution to residents in your home – or each of your homes – making sure to use a communication format that suits the individual residents.

Relatives

Using your database, we’ll manage the process of sending general and individual messages to relatives about their family members.

Local Authorities

We will engage with the local or funding authorities about the situation at the home regularly to allay any of their concerns proactively before they come to learn about the crisis at the home from third parties or whistle-blowers.

CQC

We will make sure that you, as a provider, submit any relevant CQC notifications and manage any concerns raised by third parties and whistle blowers.

Media Management

We can manage the media by creating and issuing press releases, working collaboratively with any internal teams as necessary. We’ve been involved in media management for care homes and groups in crisis in the past, successfully handling crisis communications.

Handover: Phasing out FCC

When the crisis phase has passed or if you no longer require the Crisis Management service, we will manage a two-week handover period so that we can effectively pass operations back to your regular operations management team.

Reactive or Proactive?

If you are worried about a potential crisis then we can be on standby, ready, and waiting to step in for you. This would be on a monthly retainer basis. We would develop the terms of the support package in advance, and if you hit a crisis, the plan would be activated and you would immediately start to receive support.

Alternatively, we can be contracted reactively once you hit a problem. However, our turnaround times would be slightly delayed, because we would have to agree on the details of the support package for your particular care home or group of homes.