No images? Click here Inform & Advise IntroductionHi all Welcome to the 7th COVID-19 special edition of Inform & Advise. In terms of updates to our guidance, the past week or so has been fairly quiet, but following Boris’ broadcast yesterday this week looks like it will be a bit busier. We are awaiting the publication of the detailed guidance following the PM’s speech to the nation and will then review the guidance that we have produced for our advisers. From the broadcast it sounds like there won’t be whole-sale changes so we’ll endeavour to get the amendments completed in a timely fashion, but it is still likely that we’ll not have everything done for Wednesday morning, when the new guidance comes into effect. And we will no doubt need to amend our guidance and template responses as the government clarifies any ‘grey areas’ in the their new guidance over time. Please bear with us in this process and apologies for any inconvenience we cause with either a slightly delayed response or frequent amends to the guidance. In this issue of Inform and Advise we have a greater focus on resources to support you as advisers in these challenging times. As well as talking about resources for those of you that are still advising we’d like to remind you of our I&A E-learning packages. If you have advisers that have been furloughed this might be an ideal time to ask them to work through the e-learning courses. We currently have courses on welfare benefits, social care law, housing law, energy efficiency advice, friends against scams and ‘The First 5 Minutes’(which covers customer handling skills). More information can be found on our I&A training page on the loop. We’re also currently putting the finishing touches to an Adviser Skills e-learning course which will hopefully be available in the coming weeks. One other development that you may be interested in is that Age UK is currently producing a list of Coronavirus enquiry codes for Charitylog. Thank you to those local Age UKs that have commented on and suggested additions to the codes in the past week. We are hoping to release the codes to all local Age UK Charitylog users in the coming week. Dizions will add the codes to your Charitylog system and we’ll send out instructions for local Age UKs on how they can add them to the services/projects that they would like to have use them. Use of the codes is entirely voluntary but if you’d be happy to share the data with us at the national Age UK that would be much appreciated. The codes have been built from discussions with the national Advice line, Silver line and local Age UKs. There are two tiers of codes and we would envisage that they would potentially be used by various services in a local Age UK (ie not just the I&A service). They are an additional set of codes to the existing I&A enquiry codes. We’re keeping them separate partially because they will likely be used by non-I&A services but also because they will probably need to be updated in the coming weeks and months as the pandemic and how the government responds to it develops over time. As stated previously we will be sending out newsletters on a frequent but irregular basis as we have guidance and information to share with you. Mark Tomlinson, Senior I&A Development Adviser Please note: some items in the Briefings are not relevant for partners in Wales; these are marked up in the Briefings. In this issue
Updated resources for advisersWe have continued to update the template responses to common Coronavirus queries and since the last issue of Inform and Advise on the 30th of April we have updated the following templates:
To view the templates visit our wiki. On the first screen of the wiki, under “SPACES” select “Age UK Advice” and then under “PAGE TREE” select “Coronavirus – template responses”. NB: if you get a bit lost in the menus (which is easy to do) click on the Age UK logo in the top left and this will take you back to the first screen. David has updated the ‘Changes to the Care Act 2014 under the Coronavirus Act 2020’ briefing to include:
The TASO COVID-19 briefings are also available on the Age UK COVID-19 online hub in the dedicated I&A hub. DWP UpdatesAttendance Allowance and Carers Allowance opening hours The DWP have requested that we update you on changes to the opening hours of the Attendance Allowance and Carers Allowance telephone lines. As of Wednesday the 6th of May these lines will be open form 10:00AM to 14:00PM Monday to Friday. Currently these reduced operating hours are expected to be in place for a period of two weeks. Online Pension Credit claims The online Pension Credit application functionality has been added to the Gov.UK website. To make the process of applying as simple as possible the claimant does not need to have a Government Gateway login or provide a signature. While this is welcome in terms of older people claiming for themselves it poses some issues for advisers wishing to use the online application process. We are currently discussing how advisers could use this functionality with our Professional Indemnity provider. Until we produce further guidance we advise all local Age UKs to refrain from using the online application process unless they are sat with the client (which obviously in current circumstances is very unlikely). If however you direct any clients to use the facility or hear from clients who have used it the DWP are keen to know how it has been received. Please send any feedback to mark.tomlinson@ageuk.org.uk and we’ll pass it onto the DWP. Looking after your own and other people’s mental health – training and resourcesAs the Coronavirus lock-down continues it is becoming more and more difficult for some of us to manage our feelings and our responses to the current situation. Not only are we needing to manage our own feelings, we also have our clients, colleagues, family & friends to worry about. As time goes on the future can feel very uncertain and this can give rise to feelings of anxiety and depression. To help you deal with these issues Age UK has arranged access to a range of training resources and a support line: Grey Matter Learning provide e-learning on how to recognise stress, how to manage it and how to build personal resilience when facing stressful situations. Grey Matter Learning have made it available for free on its website here. Another useful free e-learning course has been made available to us courtesy of RedR Training. They have revamped their Mental Health First Aid training to incorporate some Coronavirus specific issues. In the first module they take us through culturally appropriate hygiene promotion during these difficult times and they also consider some of the trickier aspects of social distancing when living with others. Part of the aim of the e-learning is to prevent the spread of misinformation and this is covered in the second of the three modules. The final module covers Caring for Mental Health. Click here to view the mental health first aid training. The training dates currently being offered are throughout the month of May. The Kings Fund has produced a 4 minute ‘quick read guide’ to help people manage anxiety about the different forms of loss they’re experiencing at this time – loss of a sense of safety / peace of mind; loss of people close to them; loss of routine; loss of contact. It includes four strategies for surviving and managing anxiety about loss. Finally Mental Health at Work, ‘Our Frontline’ offers round-the-clock one-to-one support, by call or text, from trained volunteers, plus resources, tips and ideas to help people look after their mental health. Text FRONTLINE to 85258 for a text conversation or call 116 123 for a phone conversation – all in confidence, with a trained volunteer, at any time. For more information click here. Are there any areas that you think are missing from this type of mental health training? Are there any particular issues that you would want to see covered? If you have any suggestions please contact the Development Adviser for your region. RNIB guidance on working with people with visual impairment during the current Coronavirus crisisThis leaflet produced by the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) is a helpful guide to working with people with sight loss at the moment. In particular it is a helpful reminder about how much social distancing guidance is determined visually (ie. Stickers on the floor) which are no use at all to many visually impaired people. IT support offer from the British Computing SocietyThe British Computing Society (BCS), The Chartered Institute for IT is a charitable organisation with a mission to make IT good for society. Our members have expertise in a range of different technologies and our volunteer communities are continuously building relationships with their local communities. With this in mind, we are keen to support the work of Age UK and mobilise our volunteers and members to support this. The BCS will provide free IT support to any Age UK organisation, staff member or volunteer that is having to learn to use new technologies or software as a result of the Coronavirus crisis. If you would like to access the support available from the BCS then please contact Olivia Wolfheart (MBCS), Membership Engagement Manager at the BCS at olivia.wolfheart@bcs.uk. entitledto newsletterIn the previous issue of Inform & advise we promoted the newsletter of entitledto, the provider of Age UK’s online welfare benefits calculator. If you would like to be kept up-to-date with changes to the calculator and also learn more about the functionality of the calculator you can subscribe for entitledto’s monthly newsletter by clicking this link. As well producing a newsletter entitledto also provide webinars on how to use the calculator’s functionality and changes to the benefits system. Including a recent webinar which looked at the welfare based changes put in place to help people during the coronavirus outbreak and what we changed in our benefit calculator as a result: Watch recording or View slides We Are Undefeatable website and videosYou are likely dealing with many calls from older people with long term health conditions who are either self-isolating or because of social distancing are largely confined to their home and thus finding it challenging to keep active. "We Are Undefeatable" is a movement supporting people with a range of long term health conditions, developed by 15 leading health and social care charities. The purpose is to support and encourage finding ways to be active that work with each person’s conditions, not against them. You can find out more at https://www.weareundefeatable.co.uk/ or https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClEmdVc80h7Gft4olLkwGhw/featured. Lord Low’s speech to the House of Lords on the 30th of April about the how Coronavirus has impacted on the advice sectorIf you have worked in the Advice Sector for a while you may be aware that Lord Low is one of our greatest advocates and also that five or so years ago he led a government commission into how the sector could be best supported. Following is a transcript of his speech to the Lords from the 30th of April: “I want to say a word about advice services, which are often the gateway to charitable help. Many free advice organisations are facing imminent collapse. The Advice Services Alliance, the umbrella body for advice services and of which I am a patron, says that many advice sector organisations are “struggling to keep services going” when faced with increased costs from remote working while anticipating unprecedented demand. Many advice services have provided face-to-face services and there is a paucity of good remote working facilities at the local level. Many agencies cannot afford them; in any case, many clients seek face-to-face advice because they are unable to access online services. The backbone of the sector’s workforce consists of volunteer advisers, but many of them are themselves in high-risk groups, and staff capacity is rapidly falling due to self-isolation and remote working. An estimated 9 million people have been furloughed, 950,00 previously financially independent people are turning to benefits, and 12.8 million households have less than £1,500 in savings and cannot meet rent or mortgage payments or repay loans. This is where people turn to the advice sector. In many cases, it carries out work that saves the Government and the taxpayer money by preventing problems escalating. We are already seeing the impact of lockdown on levels of domestic abuse. This will get worse as advice agencies struggle. Other needs for advice on things such as debt will soon reach unmanageable levels. In 2013, I chaired the commission on the future of advice and legal support. It called on the Government to come up with a national advice strategy and provide £50 million a year to support the advice sector. I call on the Government to revisit this issue and provide this regular cash injection now to help those most in need. Enabling everybody who needs it to access advice must be a key part of the Government’s strategy for the country’s recovery. We cannot predict the virus but we know what the advice needs will be. I urge the Government to act now.” Control what you get from Age UK communicationsSign up: You can subscribe to newsletters for local Age UKs using our online sign-up. Control what you receive: You can update your existing subscription and details online. Unsubscribe: To unsubscribe, please email signpost@ageuk.org.uk. If you click the unsubscribe link in the footer you'll unsubscribe from all Age UK newsletters. |