Dear Colleagues,
In the light of the current situation around the Coronavirus and the impact it is having and will continue to have on all our lives, I wanted to write to you to keep you informed as to how The Practice Rooms is responding to the situation. I wanted to share our thoughts on how we will proceed as a business and as an organisation so that as a community of practitioners within The Practice Rooms you feel taken care of and supported to ensure we can all do our best work together.
My hope is that as far as possible, you will all continue to see clients at The Practice Rooms and below you will see bullet pointed the practical measures we are adopting. More generally I think that TPR is an unusual environment as we are in the fortunate position of being able to control access. We are not open to the public and each of you can take responsibility for yourselves and your clients. We can thereby ensure that everyone is accountable. The Rooms are also spacious allowing the personal spaces/distance to be maintained. Most importantly, in this time of uncertainty, they provide a safe containment for this work, even more than usual they are an oasis, and it is therefore our intention to do our utmost to ensure they remain open and available.
However, I am also aware that this is an unfolding and unpredictable global situation that we will all have to manage according to our particular circumstances. The main intention of this email therefore is to assure you of our support and understanding as we navigate into unknown territory. I believe the nature and scale of what we are dealing with requires the burden, particularly the financial one, to be met collectively amongst all stakeholders (including local authorities, landlords and suppliers) according to capacity. In general we want to ease anxiety about expenses being incurred without income being generated and we will do our best to help with this understandable concern.
Whilst at this moment I have no specific proposals, I want the community to work together to ensure we all pull through in the best shape possible not least because I imagine there will be a very deep need in the system at large for our services. Despite the pain that will be borne in many forms, my sense is that this is an important and genuinely unique opportunity for humanity as we face a collective crisis that no peace treaty or politician can bring to an end. There have been and will continue to be, countless selfless acts as people and communities put themselves out to serve others and we have the opportunity, in our small way, to model what this might look like. For me this is “practice” in action and fundamentally what our vision is all about. As the old Hebrew sage Hillel might have said, “If not now….when?”
I feel there is no need to panic but be prepared and I hope you will receive this email in that spirit. You will hear more from me and the amazing TPR team with more detail as we move forward.
With warm wishes to you all,
Angus
In the meantime, please observe the following:
- Notices have been put up requiring all who enter the building to wash their hands. Please ensure this is done without exception.
- Please take personal responsibility for your own hygiene in the use of glasses, entry phone and emptying of bins.
- Please ask clients to bring their own water bottles minimising risk of contamination with glasses.
- Practice managers and cleaners will disinfect and wipe door handles and surfaces as regularly as they can. Please assist where you can and do it yourself.
- Please advise clients not to attend sessions if they are experiencing any of the symptoms associated with the infection.
