There will be instances where residents or their family members would like to give donations, gifts or tips to the Care Home or the staff as a token of appreciation, hence it is important to have a clear policy and guidelines of accepting gifts and tips.
The larger point of debate is, how many Care Homes have documented guidelines and policy on Gifts and Tipping?
For the benefit of the larger cause, I am sharing two annexures, “Gifts and Donations Policy” and “Gifts & Donations Form”.
Sharing a few points from the policy:
- Any cash gifts or gifts in kind by the residents to the staff members should be informed and documented in the resident’s file.
- Gifts in kind like food items should be avoided at all times and should be shared amongst other staff members only after 2 staff members who have eaten a sample and shared only after 2 hours of testing the food.
- At no point and under no circumstance will a staff accept gifts directly from a resident who has dementia, impaired memory or unstable decision-making capabilities.
- The staff member will not be favourable and biased towards residents who give gifts or tips whether know to the Home Management or not.
- No staff member will solicit or pressurise residents or their family for giving gifts to them either within the Care Home premises or outside the premises.
The document can be downloaded here (Gifts & Donations Policy) or can be viewed below