Announcement

17/03/2020

At Wills Jacobsen nothing is more important to us than the health and safety of our staff, our clients, and their families.

We are in unprecedented times and yesterday our government asked us to restrict non-essential travel, and to work from home where possible. This represents a severe disruption to all of us and particularly businesses that are client facing. However, all of us are required to make sacrifices at this time to limit the spread of the virus.

A lot of the work that we do at Wills Jacobsen brings us into contact with the elderly and most vulnerable. We often visit care homes and hospitals to serve our clients and carry out work for them at the most difficult times of their lives. In addition to this, we carry out between 10 to 15 meetings per week at our office, with a range of clients of different ages and with different health concerns.

We have considered carefully how our work may impact upon our staff and our clients at the current time, and have made decisions about how we can best continue to serve our clients, whilst protecting them and us from the spread of COVID 19.

From tomorrow 18^th March 2020, the way that we continue to serve our clients will change whilst this crisis is ongoing. Please therefore make yourself familiar with how you will be able to contact us if you need to discuss your case after this date.

From 18^th March 2020:-

Our office will be locked, and we ask that you do not attend the office:-

• If you have paperwork to drop off, you can post it via normal post or post it through our letterbox at the office. However, you will not be able to gain entry to the office itself.
• If you have a bill to pay you can call us and pay by debit or credit card, pay by faster payment using online banking, (call us for our bank details), or you can post a cheque via normal post, or post a cheque through our letterbox. However, as when dropping off other paperwork you will not be able to gain entry to the office itself.

Please do not ask to see us at the office, or request a home visit:-

• unless it is an absolute emergency (we will need to decide in our discretion what an emergency is at the time of request)
• and in all cases do not ask for a meeting if you have any of the symptoms of COVID 19, have come into contact with anyone with those symptoms in the last 14 days, or anyone in your household has current symptoms, or has had them within the last 14 days.

Meetings for new and existing clients will be conducted in the following preferred ways for the next two weeks, and possibly longer based on advice at that time:-

• By telephone – we have a conference number that is free for you to use and can be given to you on request. Alternatively, you can simply call us on the normal office number
• By Skype – if you have this facility you may prefer to use this as it is free if you have a WIFI connection. We will give you the relevant Skype address upon request
• By Whats App video call – again a free service if you have WIFI. We will give you the relevant mobile number upon request

Following government advice, we have asked our staff to work from home from tomorrow 18^th March 2020 for at least the next two weeks, and longer if further advice is given about this. Please be assured of your data protection and confidentiality during the working from home phase.

We are well placed to work from home having many years ago opted for a cloud-based case management system that can be accessed remotely, as well as having VOIP telephone systems that can be diverted to offsite locations. All systems we will be using for home working have the same security as the systems we use at our office

You should still call our usual office number 01487 808000 to speak to us. You will be diverted to our offsite office at no cost to you. Please be aware that we will only have 2 lines at the offsite office, not the normal 4 and therefore reaching us may take longer, and you may be diverted to our answerphone service more frequently. If this happens please be sure to leave your name and telephone number so that we can call you back.

You can also reach us by email at clare@willsjacobsen.co.uk or if you prefer info@willsjacobsen.co.uk

We do realise that the above measures represent a severe disruption to you, our clients, and the normal way we do business with you. We hope that the current situation will improve soon, and we wish you all the very best. Please stay safe and healthy.

The team at Wills Jacobsen.