We were delighted to be joined by Dr Nigel Sturrock, Regional Medical Director for the Midlands at NHS England and NHS Improvement. He gave an overview of the pressures placed on the NHS by the pandemic, including the impact on urgent and emergency care, elective procedures and staffing.
Dr Nigel Sturrock, Regional Medical Director for Midlands, NHS England and Improvement Damian Whitlam, Partner, Browne Jacobson
Dr Nigel Sturrock is Regional Medical Director for the Midlands at NHS England and NHS Improvement.
We were delighted to be joined by Dr Nigel Sturrock, Regional Medical Director for the Midlands at NHS England and NHS Improvement. He gave an overview of the pressures placed on the NHS by the pandemic, including the impact on urgent and emergency care, elective procedures and staffing.
Five things to look out for in 2022:
Helen Badger, Partner, Browne Jacobson
Helen specialises in employment law within health, social care and education.
She advises on a wide range of HR and employment matters, including disciplinary and grievance issues in the workplace, TUPE, equal pay, workforce change, discrimination and variation of terms and conditions of employment.
The staffing crisis as a result of COVID-19 absences is only going to increase as a result of compulsory vaccine requirement. It is anticipated that up to 73,000 staff could be lost as a result.
We foresee some dispute and debate on whether someone falls into scope.
In practical terms, people need to have had their first dose by 3 February 2022 and conversations need to be taking place with all staff now to:
It is unlikely you will be able to issue notice and allow people to work notice in time for 1 April. Payments in lieu of notice are not recommended so you need to look at redeployment opportunities during the notice period. This can include re-deployment outside your organisation and across the social care system into non patient facing roles such as telephone triage e.g. 111, GP, ambulance. We can help put you in touch with other organisations to facilitate collaboration on this.
A decision not to be vaccinated leading to termination of employment is unlikely to be a matter which reaches the threshold for employers to refer employees to their professional bodies.
PAs employed by an individual budget holder (via a PHB) are not covered by this legislation as an individual budget holder is not a CQC registered person.
As to whether an organisation can decide to offer redeployment to its non vaccinated clinical staff but not offer it to its non vaccinated non clinical staff-To avoid discrimination claims, we recommend a process which is similar to that adopted in redundancy selection exercises - i.e. objective scoring exercise carried out by independent managers. Limiting any redeployment opportunity to clinical staff could create risk if it is a role that could be equally undertaken by non-clinical staff.
COVID 19 Vaccinations NHS Staff Indemnity FAQs
James Arrowsmith, Partner, Browne Jacobson
James leads the Children’s Services and Abuse team, working with a wide range of clients across the country to support delivery of services and address historical and recent allegations of abuse, child sexual exploitation and other complaints relating to children and children's services. His role includes advice on obligations, policy, process and risk, incident management, and supporting safeguarding teams in extracting learning from incidents.
This year was always going to be a significant year for children’s social care, but towards the end of 2021 we saw the tragic cases of Arthur Labinjo Hughes and Star Hobson. We are also dealing with aftermath of the pandemic. We know that when schools were closed there was lots of concern about an increased level of harm and a loss of the multiagency approach that is so heavily relied on in social care. Issues remain: workforce challenges are cutting across all areas at the moment. If staff are stretched there is less opportunity to identify and act on concerns.
In terms of what is coming up in 2022:
Competition and Markets Authority have been looking at placement markets for children's social care, and the interim report confirms the market is not operating as it should. Their final report, with recommendation is due this year.
We have seen tension around placements particularly with the ban on unregulated accommodation. Underlying this is the fact that the right placements are available in many cases. More funding has been announced to create more places, though this will take time, and we must ensure that they do not suffer the same issues as are found in the existing market.
The National Review of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes case is due in May and will be an important read in a multi-disciplinary safeguarding context. We also know that when incidents like this have occurred in the past referrals and interventions have tended to increase.
The report of the Independent review into Children’s Social Care is due in the spring. We can see from the case for change published last year that this is likely to include the need for more early support services which get better outcomes and lass focus on late interventions when families are already in crisis. It will be interesting to see how this is balanced against tragedies like Arthur’s where intervention has not happened, but there is a general recognition that this is the right direction of travel.
We are likely to see examination of a range of topics familiar from the debate around Integrated Care Systems. This includes questions like at what level services should be delivered to get the best outcomes, and tension between procedure and relying on practitioners’ instinct. This is due to come out in Spring, but may be pushed back until after publication of the Arthur Labinjo-Hughes report. You can read more about it here.
Sir Andrew McFarlane’s report on transparency in the Family Court – Attendance at family court in relation to child protection issues can be challenging for practitioners. The report on transparency published in October 21 proposed more access to the family court for journalists and more published judgments which will increase the pressure for you and your staff giving evidence in court. The transparency implementation group met for the first time in December and are planning a 12 month programme to implement these changes.
We have prepared some guidance on that which we hope will help you and your colleagues to prepare for these hearings in family court. You can see it here. You may also be interested to read this article, which sets out top tips for addressing allegations against staff in child care proceedings.
Top tips for addressing allegations against staff in child care proceedings (brownejacobson.com)
Please do get in touch with us not only for legal assistance but also but to help connect health colleagues with social care colleagues to facilitate collaboration in relation to redeployment and any other issues.
Ed Pollard, Partner, Browne Jacobson
Ed specialises in healthcare advisory law. He has many years’ experience as a solicitor acting on behalf of NHS trusts. His work includes inquests, mental health law, the Court of Protection, the deprivation of Liberty Safeguards, fitness to practice and data protection issues.
COVID-19 has had a significant impact on logistics for inquests, but going forward we will see more inquests where COVID-19 is a proposed cause of death. Four points to consider about those types of inquest:
As always you need to have strong documentation on how decisions were made and how national guidance was interpreted.
Two final points to mention:
Nicola Evans commented that across all jurisdictions we are seeing increased pressure on staff impacting on their resilience and ability to cope with claims and inquests. The additional pressure on staff to give a report to the Coroner or give evidence can be a breaking point.
We know of some areas where the Chairs of the Hospital Gold Command have written to local Coroners seeking adjournment of all inquests scheduled in the next 2 weeks, to allow the health system to direct all available resources and staff to deal with the immediate demands of the Omicron wave. Unfortunately this request has not been agreed – Coroners are coming under increasing pressure to get the courts going to clear the backlogs of inquests that has built up in many jurisdictions during the pandemic.
Manchester (west) Coroners Court (located in Bolton) has set up a user’s forum which users have found helpful. This may be something that health and social care organisations could suggest to their local Coroners as a way of working together to manage the pressures across the whole system, and to seek to influence how Coroners are approaching listing to try to mitigate the pressures on services and staff.
Mock Inquest film and webpage for clinical witnesses
We are also about to run our inquest training course as a series of lunchtime learning modules - you can register here, please do feel free to share this information with any health and social care professionals you think would like to attend the training.
Our fortnightly online NHS forum for industry professionals.
Partner
Nicola.Evans@brownejacobson.com
+44 (0)330 045 2962
The BMA is advising all NHS / HSCNI consultants to ensure extra-contractual work is paid at the BMA minimum recommended rate and to decline offers of extra-contractual work that doesn't value them appropriately.
Settlement agreements are commonplace in an employment context and are ordinarily used to provide the parties to the agreement with certainty following the conclusion of an employment relationship.
In ‘failure to remove’ claims, the claimant alleges abuse in the family home and asserts that the local authority should have known about the abuse and/or that they should have removed the claimant from the family home and into care earlier.
Across the UK, homelessness is an urgent crisis, and one that is set to grow amid the rising cost of living. Local authorities are at the forefront of responding to this crisis, but with a lack of properties that are suitable for social housing across the UK, vulnerable individuals and families are often housed in temporary accommodation.
Claims arising from interest-only mortgages have been farmed in volume. Many such claims to date have sought to drive a narrative that interest-only mortgages are an inherently toxic product and brokers were negligent simply for suggesting them. Taylor is a helpful recalibration, focussing instead on what the monies raised by the mortgage product were being used for and whether the client understood the inherent risks.
NHS England has published (October 2022) new guidance - Assuring and supporting complex change: Statutory transactions, including mergers and acquisitions.