Team Domenica Policy for the Health and Wellbeing of Candidates Including Medication
Author: Sara Fletcher and Deborah Rayner-Grey
Consulted: Lisa Campbell-Squires
Date last reviewed: August 2024
Renewal due: August 2025
Associated Documents
Introduction
Team Domenica has the stated aim of removing barriers to paid work faced by people with learning disabilities. Ill health, in all forms, could be one such barrier and Team Domenica recognises it has a role to play in overcoming this for individuals and groups. Importantly, Team Domenica also recognises the need for multi-agency and specialist support for diagnosed medical conditions, and the necessary and important limits to the measures Team Domenica can use with adult candidates in work-based training setting.
This policy is to support staff at Team Domenica in understanding both their role in actively promoting the good health of candidates (as a measure to support progress to the workplace), and where they need to signpost, or refer to other services.
Promoting Good Physical Health
The ways of promoting good physical health at Team Domenica include:
Curriculum
Team Domenica has a specialist programme for Personal, Social and Health education and this includes taught sessions in keeping healthy, including information on smoking, alcohol, substance misuse and sexual health. Candidates also learn about community-based agencies who can offer support and information. Keeping fit is also part of this curriculum with a variety of activities available to candidates as part of the afternoon enrichment activities. Current examples are dance, cricket and martial arts.
Modelling
Staff at team Domenica are aware that all of their interactions with our candidates form an essential part of their curriculum.Ways that this can support positive physical health include following reasonable workplace boundaries, such as those related to smoking (as laid out in theEmployee Handbook), talking sensitively about healthy choices to candidates and supporting candidates in being heard when they feel unwell or with to discuss health concerns. This may include helping candidates to understand the safe and appropriate spaces for personal discussions.
Mentoring
One such safe space is one-to-one mentoring sessions and candidates may be able to use this space to raise personal concerns. Similarly, the mentor may use this space to discuss a candidate’s wellbeing, including their own choices, one-to-one. Mentors will liaise with the Pastoral Lead when there needs to be consideration given to sharing information, including with families and other health professionals.
Pastoral Support
Team Domenica has a Pastoral Lead who has the time and resources to consider the wider picture for candidates, including liaising with families and other professionals in ways that are compatible with candidates’ choice and capabilities. The Pastoral Lead will also liaise with employers where concerns about physical health or personal choices relating to health impact on a work placement. The Pastoral Lead will also ensure that all necessary risk assessments are in place for individuals where there is a specific need.
Upholding appropriate boundaries
All staff should be promoting the expectations related to a working environment. This means that there is no smoking in or around the center, no one should attend work under the influence of alcohol or either illegal or controlled substances. Responses to any such concern will involve a mix of pastoral and safeguarding systems.
Promoting Good Mental Health and Wellbeing
The ways of promoting good mental health and wellbeing at Team Domenica include:
Curriculum
Team Domenica has a specialist programme for Personal, Social and Health Education and this includes taught sessions in keeping mentally healthy. Sensitively chosen resources are selected to help candidates think about their own wellbeing, talk about themselves, and understand community agencies that are available to them. Candidates are also supported to develop the skills necessary to have healthy conversations, talk about their feelings and emotions and advocate for their own needs. Practical sessions on wellbeing strategies and interventions are also planned for.
Modelling
Staff at team Domenica are aware that all of their interactions with our candidates form an essential part of their curriculum.This can support positive mental health including using clear and accessible language around emotions and wellbeing, sensitively supporting reflection and drawing on training in attachment, emotion coaching and other areas of good practice. This may include helping candidates to understand the safe and appropriate spaces for personal discussions.
Mentoring
One such safe space is one-to-one mentoring sessions and candidates may be able to use this space to raise personal concerns, similarly the mentor may use this space to discuss a candidate’s wellbeing, including their own choices, one-to-one. Mentors will liaise with the Pastoral Lead when there needs to be consideration given to sharing information, including with families and other health professionals.
Pastoral Support
Team Domenica has a Pastoral Lead who has the time and resources to consider the wider picture for candidates, including liaising with families and other professionals in ways that are compatible with candidates’ choice and capabilities. The Pastoral Lead will also liaise with employers where concerns about mental health or wellbeing impact on a work placement. The Pastoral Lead will also ensure that all necessary risk assessments are in place for individuals where there is a specific need.
Upholding appropriate boundaries
All staff should be promoting the expectations related to a working environment. This means that there is a need for personal emotions to be regulated in shared or public spaces. Candidates will be supported in their developing knowledge of this and the skills necessary to underpin this.
Medication Policy: short-term situations
Like the general population, candidates at Team Domenica are likely to have a health condition that needs treatment through over-the-counter or prescribed medications. This is more often a short-term situation, for example, completion of a course of antibiotics or painkillers. Some candidates may have medical conditions that, if not managed, could limit their access to education. These students are regarded as having medical needs.
Team Domenica will endeavour to ensure candidates with medical needs can access provision where their wider Education, Care and Health Plan outcomes can be met, and they meet the conditions set out in the Team Domenica Policy for Admissions, Attendance and End of Placements. As a centre for adult further education focused on work-based skills, Team Domenica does not routinely employ staff in “regulated provision” i.e., those with the pre-employment checks and level of training for the completion of personal care (including the administration of medications).
Any future decision to employ such staff would be an exception to our policy and would be at the discretion of the senior leadership team based on an assessment of individual need. It would be our normal policy to encourage, support and empower candidates to manage their own medications and to self-administer medications. This includes respecting any individual choice to refuse their medication unless there has been a formal process that removes their capacity to do so.
Short-term situations
When a candidate has a short-term need for medication, such as the need to take antibiotics, pain killers, ear or eye drops or similar the following guidelines will apply:
- The candidate or their supporters/family/carers will inform Team Domenica at the earliest opportunity that medication has been prescribed or recommended
- A brief protocol will be agreed and disseminated to relevant staff in the form of an email
- The protocol will cover what the medication is, when it is to be taken and how it is to be stored
- The candidate will be encouraged to secure the medication in the relevant secure place in the training center and/or workplace
- The candidate and their supporters/family/carers will be asked to keep the medication in its original packaging as labelled by the pharmacist
- The protocol will establish whether the learner should be prompted to take the medication and what conditions may need to be considered – for example with water or food, and who will give this prompt
- The protocol will establish whether anyone else needs to be informed of whether and when the medication has been taken, or if there has been a refusal to take the medication
- A log will be kept, and signed by two people (one being the candidate ) of the medication being taken
- If any staff member is aware of a candidate taking medication for which no protocol has been published, they must inform the Pastoral Lead
- If a candidate takes medication for a one-off need this will be put on the log.
Medication Policy: long-term medical needs
All candidates are required to disclose medical needs at the application stage.
Upon receiving any information regarding a medical need, the admissions team will gather further information, including how strategies to meet that need are described in the Education, Health and Care Plan.
Where a specialist/specialist team supports the young person, they will be required to provide a protocol for the management of the condition. Where there is no specialist, this will be sought from the GP in partnership with the candidate and their supporters/family/carers.
If or when a decision has been made to admit a candidate with a long-term medical need, the professional protocol will be embedded into the risk assessment. This will form the Individual Health Plan (see page 6 of this policy). The Pastoral Lead will oversee this.
Individual Health Plan
Content of the Individual Health Plan within the risk assessment
As a minimum this will include:
- Details of the medication and its dosage
- Details of the frequency / schedule for taking the medication
- Safe storage of the medication and the mechanism by which it is ensured the medication is accessible to the candidate at all times
- Any prompts/scripts/language necessary to support the candidate in administering their medication
- The recording of the administration of the medication (which must involve two people, one of whom may be the candidate)
- Safe disposal of medications at the end of each term or at the end of placement
- The need for any training, this includes generic Handling Medications Training via the Educare portal and/or the use of specialist professionals to deliver bespoke training
- Any variation to the risk assessment for trips, activities and/or extra curricular activities.
Note: While our policy is clear that it is the aspiration that candidates administer their own medication, an exception is made for standard use epi-pens, and staff will be trained in the use of these as a need arises.
