Evacuation procedures
learnt from the past. All care home providers and managers should take a look at their fire safety and evacuation arrangements to ensure they are satisfied that they could evacuate all non- ambulant residents, staff, and visitors to a place of safety – 24/7 – without depending on the Fire Service. Recent care home specific audits carried
out by GLOBEX have highlighted that, for a variety of reasons, managers are not satisfied that they could evacuate everyone to a place of safety – even in homes given a CQC rating of good or outstanding! Not only managers, but all staff, residents, resident’s families, friends, and visitors should ask questions and be satisfied they or their loved ones could be evacuated safely without depending on the Fire Service.
When it comes to physically evacuating a mobility impaired person, it is common to find that suitable and sufficient provisions are simply not in place. An industry white paper involving decision makers from around 490 small to medium sized enterprises indicated that one in ten businesses are not sufficiently prepared to evacuate disabled persons or mobility
Some managers still thought the Fire Service was responsible for evacuation
impaired individuals.3 How can safety be left to chance when the legal obligation is that the person(s) having responsibility for a building must provide a fire safety risk assessment that includes an emergency evacuation plan and this plan should cover all people likely to be in the premises, including disabled people, and show how that plan will be implemented, and that such an evacuation plan should not rely upon the intervention of the fire and rescue service to make it work? Unlike fire safety equipment, there is
no recognised code of practice or industry standards for evacuation equipment. This is most likely as a result of equipment such as evacuation chairs falling under the requirements of medical directives, even thought the requirement to actually have them – as well as training and maintenance – falls under fire safety and health & safety legislation.
Regardless of legislation, common sense
and moral duty must prevail. Mobility impaired persons must feel safe in a building and be provided with the assurance they can be evacuated safely in the event of an emergency.
PEEPs and evacuation sheets It is essential that care home providers and managers understand their roles and responsibilities, understand their building fire strategy, emergency procedures, and the use of any equipment provided, and are satisfied that provisions are in place to ensure they could evacuate everyone from a fire resistant compartment or the whole building during day and night shifts. If they are not satisfied that these requirements can be met, improvements must be made immediately. Even where Personal Emergency
Evacuation Plans (PEEPs) are in place, they can often be a tabletop exercise and not involve the physical process of evacuation. Evacuation sheets are common in care homes. They are a cost effective solution, but are they fit for purpose? Many purchase them having seen videos of them being used in a perfect scenarios. In practice, however, we have seen many examples where we
4598_AKW-THE CARE HOME ENVIRONMENT
AD_2_HR.indd 1 July 2024
www.thecarehomeenvironment.com
13/03/2024 14:50 41
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
