Caring for vulnerable people – whatever the weather

When snow falls it often brings with it its usual dusting of disruption, cancellations and travel trouble. But despite this, a team of dedicated social workers from the County Council are well equipped to ensure a little thing like a winter blast won't knock them out their stride.

The County Council's Urgent Response Team is a county wide fast response service that provides domiciliary care to people living in their own home. The service is built to visit those people in need of social care services within one hour of them being referred, whatever the weather or conditions. It aims to enable those most vulnerable to be cared for at home, preventing hospital admissions or placements within residential care.

The Urgent Response Team has a proven history of maintaining a good standard of care to people even when adverse weather conditions prove challenging. For example with the support of staff in the County Council's transport department they have used 4x4 vehicles in the past to get staff to the most isolated areas of the county during periods of flooding and snow.  Also in the extreme snowy conditions in 2010, staff went on foot to ensure people had adequate resources i.e. medication, food, drinks, heating etc and in the 2007 floods, again the front line staff ventured out on foot while the office staff that coordinated the workers remained at work throughout the night until all service users had been reached.

Last weekend the impact of well co-ordinated gritting helped the team in their travels around the county. They did however take advantage of the 4x4 vehicles that were available for getting to service users; using two on Saturday and one on Sunday.  These helped staff get to those living in more rural locations where road conditions were more hazardous and helped ensure that, although conditions were nowhere near as bad as previous wintry episodes, no service users were left without the support they needed over the weekend.

Cllr Philip Gretton, Worcestershire County Council's Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care, said: "The staff are truly remarkable during such critical conditions and have ventured out in all weathers in the past to ensure services continue to those most vulnerable people who require this support. it is hopefully reassuring for service users - many of whom live on their own and are vulnerable - to know that there is a team of people who have and will do everything they can to provide care and support, whatever the weather."