Return to community facilities - completing a COVID Safe plan

How to manage hygiene

• Display 'wear a mask',  ‘wash your hands’, ‘cover your cough and sneeze’ and ‘reduce your risk of coronavirus’ posters – these can be found via the Department of Health and Human Services website.
• Understand your density requirements and set up your spaces to comply with physical distancing rules
• Place soap dispensers near all water taps
• Install hand sanitising stations and prompt your visitors to sanitise their hands regularly during activities
• Use social distancing advisory floor stickers and posters (Please call council to support with this if required)
• Disinfect high touch places frequently (light switches, doors and door handles, tables, rails etc.)
• Limit the use of shared equipment and disinfect shared equipment frequently
• Have personal protective equipment on hand (gloves, hand sanitizer, disinfectant)
• Create a cleaning chart to record the day, date and times that you have cleaned your equipment
• Ask your staff and visitors not to attend the premises when they are sick
• Provide education and resources about COVID to your visitors and staff
• Create a COVID Safe group agreement with your program participants
  
  

How to manage indoor facilities

• Block access to areas in your facility that are not in use
• Ensure that the activities you wish to offer comply with the current Stay at Home and Restricted Activity Directions
• Maintain food safety standards - view some general advice
• Ensure your program facilitators are aware of your COVID Safe Plan
• Request a COVID Safe Plan from all of your program facilitators/ room hirers
• Create a joint agreement with program facilitators/program participants to be COVID Safe
• Review and modify your COVID Safe Plan when required

How to manage physical distancing measures

• Provide a gap between programs finishing and starting (if running multiple sessions daily)
• Limit entry to participants only
• Put up signs / walkway arrows to instruct people on how to enter and exit the facility
• Set up attendance registers/sheets to track arrivals and departures
• Display advisory posters in areas where people could gather
• Block access to areas in your facility that will not be used

How to manage physical contact

• Modify or change some activities to limit close contact
• Limit the use of shared equipment as much as possible.
• Only recommence programs and activities that comply with the current Restricted Activity and Stay at Home Directions

How to manage shared equipment

• Limit the use of shared equipment and clean it frequently
• If possible, only use equipment that can be cleaned well
• Create a cleaning chart to record the date, day, and times that you have cleaned the equipment
• Create a COVID Safe group agreement in which your participants will agree not to share cutlery, drink bottles etc.

How to manage compliance

• The way you will monitor compliance will be based around the measures that you put into your COVID Safe plan.
• Monitoring examples include: staff meetings, attendance registers, cleaning charts, providing COVID prevention updates and resources in newsletters.
• Strategies to address non-compliance include: Not permitting entry to visitors if they are unwell. Add this to your group agreements with participants.

What are some COVID safe protocols & processes?

• Poster requesting visitors to not enter the facility if they are unwell
• Group agreement that visitors will not attend if unwell
• Asking visitors who present unwell to leave the premises, seek medical attention and not return until they are medically well
• Communicate any changes to your program’s COVID Safe plan through letters, newsletters, staff meetings, social media and website

What are some forms of communication?

• Writing letters or sending emails to the key people you need to contact
• Send newsletters to your members
• Post information on your social media and your website
• Create COVID Safe group agreements with program participants
• Display posters at the entrance to your facility and in your activity rooms