Veritas is continuing to provide essential services throughout the pandemic

We’re experiencing challenging times as a global community, and the situation continues to evolve and change rapidly. As a provider of essential services for vulnerable children, young people and families in our region, Veritas House responded quickly to the COVID-19 outbreak to ensure our services could continue, through a focus on minimising risk to our staff, service users and the community. Some of the initiatives we have undertaken over recent weeks has included:

• Physical distancing, through the use of technology to communicate with clients wherever possible. This has included closing the doors at each of our offices to enable staff on-site to ask visitors safety questions prior to admission into the buildings; and cancelling or postponing events and meetings that are not essential
• Work-from-home arrangements have been put in place for staff where possible, and staff working at our offices have been split across sites to ensure a spread of teams across the region
• We have implemented stringent cleaning procedures and safe hygiene practices across all of our sites, including the increased availability of hygiene and other supplies. Our staff have also undertaken training on COVID-19 hygiene measures to prevent infection and are aware of the processes required to notify management if a client, staff member of carer develops symptoms
• We also continue to review the way we provide our accommodation services and have a range of plans in place to support alternative accommodation to support clients, as required
• Our staff are working hard to communicate regularly with all of our service users, foster carers and other stakeholders about the symptoms of COVID-19, ways to prevent transmission, and what Veritas is doing to provide support and deliver services throughout this time.