Staff Newsletter 7 May 2020

Dear Colleague

We continue to be very grateful for all your hard work in health care and your loyalty to us at 18 Week Support.

This is our sixth weekly newsletter to inform you of what we are doing to provide clinical support to the NHS in these difficult times and offer support to you.

18WS Activity

Many NHS Trusts are now looking at their recovery plans for their waiting lists and NHS England have announced a national recovery plan for urgent patients on waiting lists for treatment. Please see letter here

Furloughing Clinical Staff

A communication is going out today (6th May) by email to those clinical staff eligible for furloughing for the month of April 2020. The email has been sent from the Finance@18weeksupport.com inbox. Please check your junk mail in case the email is caught by your spam filter. You will only get an email if 18 Week Support has furloughed you.

Please note: It is important that you complete your details at the bottom of the email to confirm acceptance to be furloughed. You will not be included on the May payment run unless this reply is received. Please reply to Finance@18weeksupport.com ONLY (do not copy other email addresses in)

The claim has been submitted to HMRC. We cannot make the payroll payment until the claim to HMRC is received by us. We hope that we will still be able to make payment as usual on 15th May. If there is a change to this, we will email those on the furlough list to advise of a revised payment date.

Expenses

For those who are entitled to reclaim expenses, thank you to those who have now submitted outstanding expense claims. Under the current policy, these must be received within 60 days of the date the expense was incurred.

New Policy – The new revised policy is undergoing its final review and will be circulated within the next few weeks. Please note that the time to claim will be reduced to 30 days. Claims not received within the correct timescales will not be reimbursed so please ensure all claims are submitted promptly.

Virtual Drop-In Sessions

We held our last virtual drop-in session on Thursday 30th April for everyone who works in ophthalmology. This was a great success with over 40 of you attending.

If you have not already done so please can you send us your feedback here

Headquarter staff

Our headquarter staff continue to work with us, but with reduced working hours:

9 a.m. to 3: 30 p.m. Monday to Friday.

Covid 19 Staff Tracker

Please let us know if you are self-isolating or have signs and symptoms of COVID 19 as we keep a tracker of all staff and follow up with a welfare call from Jake, Head of Nursing.

Resources

Below are links to resources that may be useful to you.

Staying in Touch

We love our 18WS family and we want to stay in touch with you and get your feedback on how you are and what more we can do to support. Please send any comments or suggestions about this newsletter to Niara at nblommestein@18weeksupport.com.

With our very best wishes.

Jane Naish
Director of Nursing

Niara Blommestein
Service Operations Manager