Our decision making in response to the COVID-19 pandemic is rooted in the following
principles:
● We will start from a position of compassion and care and of ‘doing no harm’ as a
result of our decision making;
● We will endeavour to balance our priorities to vulnerable young women, along with
an obligation to reduce the spread of the virus;
● We have a duty to do all we can to protect our team from contracting the virus as a
direct result of their work with/for Abianda;
● We have a duty to consider the families and networks of our team and the young
women we work with - some of whom will be in high risk category groups (i.e:
aging/unwell parents, grandparents, weak immune systems, and those with
underlying conditions);
● We will ensure that young women are involved in the planning process regarding
how we can best work with them during this time;
● Our decision making will be easily evidenced and provide assurances for our
funders and commissioners that we continue to use their resources responsibly;
● We will make decisions based on the evidence we have available to us and in line
with Government, NHS and World Health Organisation guidance.
Immediate actions and decisions:
1. As of Tuesday 17th March we are initiating working from home (WFH)
arrangements for all team members;
2. We will endeavour to maintain a service to young women via telephone, social
media and online conferencing apps;
3. We will assess each young woman's circumstances and review her risk,
safeguarding issues and resources she may require in order to maintain contact
with our services (data, mobile phone etc)
4. The team will no longer use public transport to conduct Abianda business and
alternative transport methods can be agreed where travel is essential;
5. All service delivery and training that takes place in group settings will be cancelled
and rescheduled for a later date (this includes our group work in schools);
6. All external and internal meetings will be carried out via online conferencing;
7. Measures will be put in place to enable our team to WFH, to support team morale
and wellbeing and to oversee work productivity;
8. We will have clear lines of communication for anyone who wishes to make contact
with a member of our team;
9. Our organisation's infrastructure, including our internal safeguarding functions, can
operate normally under WFH arrangements.
Working with our partners to maintain a service for young women:
We will do our very best to maintain our services for the young women we support. Providing
a remote service, however, will be challenging.
We expect young women’s risk to increase and their vulnerabilities to be exacerbated by the pandemic. We are committed to our responsibility to support young women as much as we possibly can, however more than ever we will need to rely on the strength of our partnerships to achieve this.
We ask that all partners, especially those with statutory responsibility, work closely with us and maintain their contact with young women too so that collectively we can collectively maintain a network of support for young women.
We will:
● Endeavour to provide young women with the resources to keep in touch with us;
● Maintain regular contact with young women where possible;
● Maintain regular contact with professionals networks who support the young women and who hold statutory responsibility;
● Maintain our safeguarding efforts as a priority;
● Undergo an individual risk assessment for each young woman to inform our priorities and action planning in the context of COVID-19;
● Attend scheduled meetings remotely, where there is the facility to do so.
Changing circumstances
We currently expect this arrangement to be in place for approximately one month but will review guidance daily and adapt our response and actions plans as new information emerges.
All new information regarding our response to the virus and our service delivery will be posted here.
If you need to make contact us, please email: hello@abianda.com.
We wish you good health and that you stay safe.
The Abianda Team
Last updated: 17th March 2020
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