March 30th, 2020
To Our Community Partners;
In order to support the health and safety of all of our employees, foster parents, volunteers as well as the families, children and youth we work with, KHCAS has made changes to how we are delivering some of our services and how we are meeting with children, youth and families. Our leadership team meets daily and we are closely monitoring our Local, Provincial and Federal public health authorities and will keep our community partners apprised of any further changes to our service delivery plan.
The Society has an Emergency Preparedness Plan in place, and we are actively monitoring the situation and responding as required. Our employees continue to be available to answer calls, respond to referrals and work with families, children and youth to ensure safety as required, including conducting investigations.
Since our communication on March 18th, 2020, we have made additional modifications to our service delivery model in support of proactive measures to limit and prevent the spread of COVID-19 including:
- All offices are closed to outside visitors. If you need to attend the office to drop something off or pick something up, please call first so that we can assess how we can facilitate what you need in a different way. If you are required to attend the office, you will be asked screening questions prior to your arrival.
- All non-essential meetings have been cancelled and where meetings are required, we have provided information to our employees on how to facilitate teleconferencing as an option to facilitate meetings.
- While we are committed to ensuring delivery of service, we are encouraging our employees to work from home and are facilitating the means to do this. Employees will be on site as required, however, will be kept to a minimum and will be following social distancing practices including increased hand hygiene and refraining from sharing food or gathering in groups. We continue to assess who is required to be on site daily in an effort to have all employees working from home when possible.
- We are reviewing all of our work with families to ensure that we can maintain support while at the same mitigating risk to our employees and families, children, youth and young adults we work with. These discussions are occurring daily with planning on a case by case basis.
- All employees, volunteers and foster parents have been asked to advise the Society if they have traveled or are feeling unwell. For anyone who has traveled outside of Canada, we are asking them to self-isolate for 14 days as required by Public Health Canada.
If you have any questions, please call us at 1-800-661-2843. We will post any updates regarding our service
operations on our website and shared via social media platforms.
Thank you,
Jennifer McLauchlan, CHRL
Executive Director (A)
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