COPE has considerable experience of providing occupational health services in the education sector - including Nurseries and Early Years settings. We use this experience to ensure that our customers receive professionally delivered services that meet their organisational and legal needs in all aspects of occupational health.
We count a number of Early Years providers amongst our longstanding clients. These vary from individual nurseries, those with a handful of settings, right up to very large organisations with a wide range of geographically dispersed settings.
Early Years provision presents a unique and challenging management environment - often with a predominantly younger employee profile, where frequent short term absence can be a significant drain on resources and morale.
We find that mental health and wellbeing concerns are a predominant cause for absence and poor performance amongst younger employees and musculoskeletal (joints and back pain) the largest concern for middle-aged employees. Our services incorporate a range of services specifically designed to support Early Years providers with these common challenges.
We also acknowledge that general life challenges can often be a major cause of unplanned absence for younger employees. We have a service specifically designed to help employees deal with every day life challenges. This service has a major impact on attendance, employee wellbeing and employee satisfaction.
The aim of the this service is to tackle key issues that affect the employee's wellbeing and work performance. We do this by working with employees to help them identify and resolve personal and work related concerns.
Sometimes individual counselling is the answer - but, more of than not, the concern relates to a specific issue that represents a challenge for the individual. These challanges are often in the "homeplace" setting, but have a significant influence on performance or attendance in the workplace.
Common concerns are often matters such as relationship difficulties, financial worries, younger care difficulties, elder care difficulties, homeplace changes, managing drug or alcohol use and general health concerns (eg Covid).
The most common reason for contacting the service over the last year has been matters related to Covid; another common request has been support in managing/organising childcare or elder care services (this is a regular cause for concern and is the cause of around a third of short term unplanned absence nationally).
Key features of our service include:
All help lines are answered by professionally qualified specialists:
The counselling help line being answered by fully qualified counsellors..
The legal help line is answered by qualified and experienced solicitors.
The Money & Debt help line is staffed by financial & debt management specialists.
The Health & Well-Being help line is answered by
Occupational Health nurses.
Some work environments are a particularly high risk of causing physical symptoms associated with manual handling and postural loading. They can be incredibly difficult to manage from a H&S risk perspective and the risk of absence – particularly with older employees, or inexperienced younger employees – can be very high.
Nurseries and Early Years Settings can have a high impact on backs and joints as a result of constant bending and twisting to pick up or engage with young children.
Physiotherapists are specialists in assessing and treating musculoskeletal conditions. If some of your work areas have a relatively high rate of absence relating to musculoskeletal conditions (backs and joints), this may be a service option worth considering.
We are able to offer face to face or virtual (video) consultations via a our national network of physiotherapy clinics. The principle objectives of COPE’s occupational health physiotherapists when undertaking such consultations with an employee are to :
Following a physical assessment, a report is completed for the referring party. The information provided in our reports covers the all of the above, with a focus on effective rehabilitation and return to work if this is deemed to be achievable. This may include a return to work plan, or other adjustments to facilitate the employee’s being safe and productive at work. It will also include a summary of any advice provided to the individual relating to the management of their condition. Follow up treatments may also be recommended. If a safe return to work is not considered an option within the foreseeable future, this will be stated by the physiotherapist – enabling the organisation to make management decisions about the individuals future employment.