A responsible approach to Covid-19
In these challenging times, we wanted to reassure our clients that we are acting responsibly and have contingency actions in place so that we can keep providing our essential services.
What we are doing
We continue to monitor all official advice including that from the Government, Department of Health & Social Care, Public Health England (PHE), World Health Organisation (WHO) and local authorities (SKDC and LCC). The health and wellbeing of our staff, associates and clients is of paramount importance so we have taken the following steps:
Counselling and Therapy
In addition, we are monitoring the latest advice from relevant authorities including the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) who have issued guidelines on how to proceed with counselling, aligned with the aforementioned WHO and local authority guidelines. As practitioners, there is an ethical duty to prevent harm to clients, whilst also ensuring a balance is achieved between taking appropriate precautions and not causing undue concern to clients.
We recognise that this is an anxious time for many of our clients and we wanted to reassure you that we have taken measures to maintain a safe space by reconfiguring our counselling rooms to ensure a 2m distance between client and practitioner. We also recognise the importance of enabling clients to continue their sessions in the event of self-isolation or travel lockdown, so have set up facilities to ensure sessions can continue either as structured telephone or online video counselling.
Consulting
As knowledge workers, we firmly believe that consulting is about outcomes and that the majority of our work can be undertaken remotely with the support of our fine array of digital tools including GSuite, O365, Slack, Zoho, Zoom, Trello, Xero, Salesforce and Evernote. Consequently, we have advised all our consultants to respect the advice of each of their clients whilst working remotely as much as possible.
General Advice
As per the advice issued by PHE, the following precautions remain the best way of preventing people from catching and spreading Covid-19:
Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue or your sleeve (not your hands) when you cough or sneeze. See Catch it, Bin it, Kill it
put used tissues in the bin straight away
wash your hands with soap and water often – use hand sanitiser gel if soap and water are not available. See hand washing guidance
try to avoid close contact with people who are unwell
clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces
do not touch your eyes, nose or mouth if your hands are not clean
If you are worried about symptoms, please call NHS 111. Do not go directly to your GP or other healthcare environment.
We also urge everyone to #BeKind and reach out to others in your local community to offer support, and to avoid panic buying in supermarkets. Thank you and stay safe Esther and Mark Hastings Directors, i-10 Limited