COVID-19 (coronavirus) - GSF signposting and guidance on the Coronavirus Epidemic

COVID-19 - Care Homes Support Calls & Information - May 2020

The National GSF Centre is the UK’s leading training provider for generalist frontline staff in caring for people in the last years of life. For over twenty years, GSF has helped teams in all settings provide better supportive care, enabling them to live well until they die. Many thousands of doctors, nurses and carers have received GSF quality improvement training, improving the care of several million people over the years. The GSF Centre, led by its founder and National Clinical Lead Prof. Keri Thomas OBE, has since 2000, provided nationally recognized training and accreditation in 12 programmes across all settings. 

GSF has a great impact - it affects the care of over half a million people every year and helps put national policy into practice on the ground (see Evidence Base). The aim is to enable a ‘gold standard’ of care to help people live well before they die, and to die well in the place and the manner of their choosing. This includes: 

• all people,
• with any condition,
• in any setting,
• given by any care provider,
• at any time in their last years of life.

GSF is a practical systematic, evidence-based approach to optimizing care for all people nearing the end of life, given by generalist front-line care providers. GSF is all about quality care - quality improvement with training, quality assurance with standards of care and quality recognition with recognised accreditation.

There are 12 GSF quality improvement training programmes across 8 sectors, a cross boundary care programme and 3 subject based programmes (see below).

Click here to read about the Benefits of GSF Accreditation and Re-Accreditation. 

GSF both influences national policy developments, and helps put policy into practice on the ground supporting grass-roots change in line with NHS Long Term Plan, NICE Guidance, Enhanced Health in Care Homes, DH EOLC Strategy, Ambitions Care Quality Commission (CQC), and Skills for Care etc.

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, The GSF Centre is temporarily closed from early April and the GSF team will be on furlough.

We hope to reopen end-May/mid-June - to be confirmed. If you contact us during this time we are sorry but we are unable to reply to you until furlough is complete.

There is a great deal of information on our website https://www.goldstandardsframework.org.uk/ including the Virtual Learning Zone and some specific information related to COVID-19 on

https://www.goldstandardsframework.org.uk/gsf-signposting-and-guidance-on-the-coronavirus-epidemic.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused and send you all our good wishes.  

Keri Thomas and the GSF team

Introduction to the GSF website

Overview from the GSF Centre

GSF fulfills National Policy - 1357 Summary

Tim Straughan, Deputy Director of Personalised Care, NHS England

Sarah Jarvis, Clinical Director, Patient Information

What is GSF?

For more details of each GSF Programme, select one of the icons below, or click here

Primary Care

Care Homes

Acute Hospitals

Community Hospitals

Domiciliary Care

Hospice Support

Retirement Villages

Prisons

Cross Boundary Care

Dementia Care

Clinical Skills

Spiritual Care