Insight


will work. This situation gets to the core of the issues about choice and collective responsibility. As a care home provider, how do you manage this situation if it arises at you service? If existing staff refuse to have the


vaccine, you cannot force them to have it. You have to be more subtle in you approach and provide all the information you can to try an influence the mindset of the member of staff, and also use the argument of ‘collective responsibility’ and the increased risk to the people you support if the vaccine is not administered. If a member of staff continues to


refuse to have the vaccine you could redeploy the person to less of a front-line role and not offer additional shifts above contracted hours. These actions are not ideal, but could be used to highlight the ‘collective responsibility’ that we all have to protect people that use the service and restrict the spread of the virus.


Nudge, nudge There is something called ‘nudge theory’ that says people are more likely to do something if you tell them lots of other people are doing it as well. A nudge, according to the theory, helps people make better choices for themselves without restricting their freedom of choice. It accomplishes this by making it easier for people to make decisions. To enact nudge theory in your service,


you could put posters around the service of people being happy to receive the jab, share videos of people receiving the vaccine jab, put on the website how many staff and residents have had the vaccine at you service or within your organisation. You could even produce badges for


people to wear that say: ‘I’ve had the jab’. All these will create an atmosphere of collective responsibility, and unconsciously push people into making choices that you want them to make. You want to make the culture within


your service one that encourages people to ‘do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do’ not for something in return or to let people know what they have done. People should just do things because they know they should and that it will benefit others.


Beyond Covid-19 Looking beyond the pandemic, there can be some learning from this to drive your business forward in other areas. Think about putting healthier options at the top of a menu to try to encourage residents to make these choices, you could also more proactively display photographs or share videos of positive activities that have happened at your service to show more reticent participants the fun people are having. For staff, you could identify and share


positive stories on social media, website or newsletters about how well they have been supported, included and valued through the pandemic. You could also internally publicise the percentage of staff that have completed training or had supervisions. If this is a high figure, the nudge theory


indicates that other, less forthcoming staff, will be keener to partake, without the need for more direct, controlling methods. Out of necessity, the use of technology


to aid communication has been an area that has really taken off during the pandemic and has to a degree facilitated people to make choices and be in control of who they ‘see’ and when. When you mention Zoom, Teams


or Skype, most people have now heard about them, and the basics of how to use them. This is also true in care services, with more tech-savvy staff educating others on their use, demystifying how they work and reducing the fear attached to new technology. It is not a complete substitute for


meeting, touching or holding someone, but at the moment it is usually the best we can do. Just imagine how difficult it would have been if the pandemic had struck ten years ago before the availability of any of this technology to allow us to meet virtually? It might not be everyone’s choice to


use technology to stay in touch, but I think most people would agree that at the moment it is the least worst option, and will therefore use it. And who knows, in the future we may not go back, and we may well all embrace the benefits, and prefer this more remote way of staying in touch? We have a remarkable way of fearing


anything new and saying it will be the end of the things we know. Remember how it was said that telephones would be the end of letters, video was going to be the


28 www.thecarehomeenvironment.com • April 2021


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57