HR and employment law advice
The effective recruitment and management of care staff are key to achieving and maintaining a safe, caring, responsive and effective care business.
Legal experts with CQC experience
Your business and its staff are heavily regulated by CQC so dealing with staff issues requires specialist knowledge of the regulatory system. Our solicitors have substantial experience in advising care providers on employment and related regulatory issues. These include:
- Recruitment and retention
- Compliance with the National Minimum / Living Wage
- Suspending staff and taking disciplinary action
- Whistleblowing and safeguarding investigations
- Disclosure and Barring Service referrals
- Managing sickness absence and poor performance
- Grievance and discrimination investigations
- Business immigration
- TUPE advice on the sale or purchase of a business or on the re-tender of local authority funded contracts
- Employment contracts for care staff and Registered Managers
- Policies and staff handbooks for care staff
- HR training
HELP: expert employment advice for the social care sector
Managing your staff as well as dealing with the competing pressures from CQC, local authority safeguarding teams, the Health & Safety Executive and funding authorities can be overwhelming. This is why we’ve set up HELP: a legal service to guide you through, find a resolution and minimise any damage to your business interests and reputation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Travel time and sleep-in shifts are ‘working time’ for the purposes of the National Minimum / Living Wage and have to be taken into account when calculating whether your rates of pay are compliant. However, there may be more cost effective ways of becoming compliant than paying all travel time and sleep-in shifts at the National Living Wage. This will depend on your specific pay and working arrangements so you should take specific advice.
If an employee is disabled within the meaning of the Equality Act 2010, you have a duty to consider making reasonable adjustments to the employee’s role before you decide to dismiss them. If there are no reasonable adjustments, the adjustments have not had the required effect on the employee’s ability to do their role and there are no other suitable roles available, you may have grounds to terminate employment. However, you should take legal advice to avoid the risk of a costly tribunal claim.
We are able to offer a number of cost effective HR and employment law solutions which can take the strain off your Registered Manager. More information can be found here.
Contact our health & social care team today
"I have always found them to be accessible and quick to respond to any queries. I am very happy to recommend the Social Care team at RWK Goodman to other care home providers."
