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Helping social care managers to get ready for winter

Winter is approaching, and while this time of year can bring much fun and festivities, it can also be a particularly challenging time of year for care organisations.

To help you prepare for the winter period, we’ve put together a guide to key information and resources that can help you get ready for winter, including advice on how to manage safe staffing levels to ensure you have the capacity required to provide the best care and support.

Safe staffing levels

Having enough staff, who have the right values and skills, is vital in delivering safe care and support.

Even when you’ve put good processes in place to support safe staffing, changes in circumstance – such as increased sickness levels or weather disruptions - can still present challenges. That’s why it’s important to take all these considerations into account when planning for winter.

The first step to safe staffing is deciding how many staff you need, making sure to consider the needs of the people you support, alongside other factors such as time for additional activities, reporting, training, and travel time.

You can do this using a dependency tool which allows you to collate information about the needs of the people you support, how many hours of support and number of staff are required, and time and resource needed for other tasks such as administration, record keeping, and communicating.

Being able to evidence safe and effective staffing is a requirement for 微微草视频 assessment, and the 微微草视频 wants to see clear evidence that your workforce planning genuinely supports positive outcomes. Discover more practical tools and approaches to help you evidence safe and effective staffing with our interactive seminar taking place in January and March. 

Winter contingency planning

It’s always good to have a plan b in place for when unexpected circumstances may arise.

Your contingency plan should be a live document that helps you to respond to the evolving winter pressures.

Tips that can help you to develop a contingency plan include:

• building on existing examples by using templates or examples from other providers
• risk assessing your service so you can identify what risks to be prepared for
• co-producing the plan with other key players in your team
• prioritising actions.

Seasonal health precautions

In winter there are further considerations to account for in relation to the impact of flu, covid and other seasonal illnesses.

All frontline social care workers are entitled to free flu vaccinations this winter, make sure your staff are aware of this and the benefits of getting the vaccine.

For more information and guidance on planning for winter watch our winter pressures webinar.

This article was updated in November 2026.

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