Welcome to the UKQCS newsletter. If you have any difficulty in reading the newsletter please let us know and we can provide you with a stripped down version which can be read by all email clients. This newsletter is free, so please pass it on to your colleagues, who can sign on for their own copy by visiting our website at www.ukqcs.com and completing the brief details requested. You should have yesterday received our flyer about the next tranche of our HR support service made available this week, with the first 15 applicants receiving a £353 discount on a service which is already very competitive. All of the features of such a service which you have asked us over recent years to provide have been included – a case manager not a call centre to handle your calls, care sector focus, on site assistance if required, based on the policies you actually use, and competitive rates. If you would like to discuss this offer, the service, or obtain more details, phone us now on 08707 489 899. The discounted offer does not look as if it will last much longer. You do not have to be a UKQCS management system client to have this service Some of this information may have been buried in the detail, so here again is the information on recent updates and additions to the UKQCS Care Quality Management System. All of the updated policies will automatically present as "please re-read" on your web site, and the new ones will be flagged red and "read". Discipline policy: added detailed instructions of who and how to conduct the various stage interviews Smoking policy: new policy added ready for no-smoking day Minimum Wage policy: updated Recruitment packs: updated Medications policy: updated to include Venalink training materials Mental Capacity Act: New policy to meet the Act. Version 2 in preparation already Fire Safety policy: Addition of notes about common causes of fire and how to guard against them Care Planning packs: updated to cope with Mental Capacity Act, including new review documentation Complaints policy: explicit list of contact details of external organisations added, automatically populated from your SOP data Infection Control policy: Addition of an environmental infection control audit, based on the standard Infection Control Nurses Association audit New policy under development: Verification of Death policy The House of Lords has handed down its decision in the landmark case to decide if the Human Rights Act applies to care homes, because of their public funding. In a 3-2 majority decision, the Lords decided that the HRA does not apply to care homes not run by local authorities. The full BBC web site story can be found at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6220716.stm The increase in holiday entitlement due in October 2007 has highlighted a common confusion; the mixing up of “weeks” and “days” and “hours”. Even the Dti talk about an increase of 4 days, when they mean something different, and they are the ones who wrote the legislation in terms of “weeks” and not days. To clarify: the current holiday entitlement is 4 “weeks” (not 20 days, or a number of hours). A “week” is defined as the average pay per week of the 12 weeks preceding the holiday (not the “contract hours”). From 1st October the entitlement will be still 4 weeks, but you may not count 4 of the 8 Bank Holidays towards the 4 weeks. From 2009 you will not be able to count the other 4 Bank Holiday days. If you do not currently count Bank Holidays towards the entitlement the changes are less clear. You may not have to award a further 4 or 8 days, but your employees may be disgruntled by the appearance of not receiving something they thought they were going to benefit from. Watch this space for developments. Stick to this simple formula and holiday pay calculations are relatively simple. Introduce concepts such as days or hours which are not in the legislation, and the calculations become mired in complications, allowing imprecision which someone will see and exploit. For those of you with time to read it, there is an excellent article on the subject “Managing Holiday Entitlement” on the EmployeeBenefits.co.uk web site at http://tinyurl.com/3xbhgr BUPA has sold its 25 private UK hospitals to the private equity firm Cinven for £1.44bn, to focus on its health insurance business. Full story in the Guardian at http://tinyurl.com/34efrb Pavilion Publishing have newly revised edition of Learning Disability Today which provides an updated introduction to some of the central issues in the lives of people with learning disabilities and their supporters. It provides context, underpinning knowledge and practical strategies for giving care and support to people with learning disabilities that promotes rights, independence, choice and inclusion. More details at http://tinyurl.com/2jlvej The Court of Appeal has handed down a decision overturning the frequently criticised EAT case of Kraus v Penna. The Court of Appeal has now held that it is sufficient if an employee reasonably believes that a criminal offence (or legal obligation) exists. It does not actually need to exist. In deciding the meaning of 'reasonable belief', the Court decided that the words did not introduce an additional requirement for the employee to be right. Consequently, the test of “reasonable belief” was a subjective one. Applying this, the Court decided that the appellant's belief that the information he was disclosing met the criteria was “plainly reasonable” even though it turned out to be wrong. The House of Lords has overturned the Court of Appeal in St Helens Borough Council v Derbyshire, holding that forceful and intimidating letters sent by an employer to a group of employees claiming Equal Pay can amount to victimisation. The House of Lords held that the employer, who had written deeply unpleasant letters to 39 equal pay Claimants - pointing out that they might be responsible for the loss of their colleagues' jobs if they won their equal pay claims - had subjected those Claimants to a detriment on the grounds they had brought a tribunal claim. For personal stuff we use Google mail. This free service is substantially more secure (no spam), easy to use and organise, and of larger capacity than old rivals such as hotmail, yahoo and AOL. You can create an account at http://tinyurl.com/3xqnfp or by searching for Google Mail. But please, if you do change your email account, re-register for this newsletter - we would hate to lose you. Also recommended is Google documents, which allows you to create word and excel type documents online in secure storage for viewing and editing by yourself from any internet connected PC, and also either show them to selected colleagues or even share editing with them. Very useful for sharing information with people with whom you are not co-located. You can even chat on the same screen while both of you are editing the same document, watching Google merge both sets of edits – quite a weird experience. You can also, using Google Calendar, create your own calendar and share it with selected other people. Basic, Google Documents is free and perfectly acceptable for most purposes, but there is a corporate paid-for version which also gives you added functions. ACAS have published two new guides. Maternity at http://tinyurl.com/2oyxlq and Annual Leave (what, again?) at http://tinyurl.com/35gqqu Company registered in England & Wales Reg No 5776646 Tel: 08707 489 899 Fax: 08701 316 817 Email: info@ukqcs.com Online care sector management and quality assurance systems Care Training including NVQ Personnel/Employment Law support/HR indemnity package HR/Personnel/Payroll outsourcing Audits; CSCI and RDB pre-audits CRB/POVA checking Induction, including LDAF Care and Business Consultancy
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