Touchstone’s aim is to continue to provide vital support and services with people, in the way that they would prefer, throughout the COVID 19 pandemic. We understand that service users and our staff will be feeling anxious and vulnerable at this time. Working with partners, Touchstone managers have developed well thought out plans for each of our services and teams.
Touchstone understands that the need for our mental health and wellbeing support is likely to increase, and we want to reassure services users, partners and others that we will continue to offer as much support as we can.
We are following Public Health England advice closely, and offering staff daily updates to help guide their implementation of contingency plans. This week, this means
- Continuing to offer face to face support to service users who are well and who want this wherever possible.
- Offering smaller groups, one to one, online and telephone support to people who usually attend groups to keep them well.
- Changing all work to be more agile where possible, protecting our vulnerable staff and service users, and those who live with ‘at risk’ people.
- Minimising staff contact with each other through the suspension of meetings such as training, and offering telephone/ conferencing/ online support instead.
- Encouraging and enabling all staff to follow strict hygiene and distancing guidelines.
- Testing out how we would work should the government instruct everyone to remain at home.
Anyone who has a query can send an email to our dedicated email address covid19@touchstonesupport.org.uk, and the Pandemic Leadership Team will get back to you.
Photo by 🇨🇭 Claudio Schwarz | @purzlbaum on Unsplash
