Message from Claire Armstrong, Director – Adult Social Care Delivery, DHSC
In advance of the Royal College of Nursing industrial action tomorrow, I wanted to share with you some headline messages and information. I would be grateful if you could please circulate this amongst your networks.
- The Royal College of Nursing will be taking industrial action on Thursday 15 December and Tuesday 20 December. Strike action will comprise of 12-hour walkouts across 65 NHS organisations, between the hours of 8am and 8pm.
- The impact of industrial action on adult social care services will vary depending on where the 50% threshold for strike action has been met, staffing levels on the day, and any local derogations or mitigations already put in place by local systems. However, we expect there to be at least some level of disruption across community health services, including mental health and learning disability services, as well as an impact on discharge into adult social care.
- NHS England have agreed national derogation principles across all affected services, and at a minimum, a Bank Holiday Service will be provided.
- Local health systems should already have taken steps to inform social care services in receipt of NHS care how industrial action will be impacted in their area, including the outcome of local derogation discussions.
- Local health and social care systems should also have taken steps to put emergency contact plans in place to ensure the appropriate escalation of any regent issues on the day of industrial action.
- The Royal College of Nursing have also confirmed that community services are explicitly derogated to a Christmas Day service, which will enable NHS community teams to provide palliative care and clinically urgent interventions (for example, insulin).
Specific derogations are also agreed for mental health and learning disability & autism services – across CAMHs, adults and older adults (inpatient and community) as well as the crisis response support to support other services. Again, these are based on Christmas Day rotas
