In an ideal world, your final week before a holiday would be all plain-sailing – tying up loose ends, and making sure colleagues have everything they need during your absence. In practice though, things often work out quite differently – especially in the unpredictable world of nursing and care work.

Just ask Kirstie, area manager for three care homes each with about 70 patients. A quiet last week would have been nice, but when four of her care workers left independently and put staffing ratios in jeopardy, the pressure was suddenly on.

That was late Monday, which meant Kirstie had only four days to find, vet and hire trained replacements, as well as juggle all the usual day-to-day admin every over-stretched manager knows all too well. The situation looked even more serious, especially when you factor in the complex caseload at their three nursing homes – people with dementia, advanced MND, physical and sensory impairments – both old and young. On top of all that, Kirstie was also extremely mindful of their company’s superb CQC rating, and many awards for delivering high quality of care. With their reputation at stake, it looked like Kirstie’s dream holiday would remain just that if she couldn’t plug those gaps, urgently.

Dialling the Avanta Care hotline, as she has done many times before, Kirstie turned to her long-standing account manager, Adrian. Even at short-notice, our people are used to responding flexibly in a tricky predicament like this. By Thursday (just three days later), not only had Adrian recruited and placed well-matched candidates, he’d also found them affordable accommodation nearby, and had them fully briefed so they were able to hit the ground running. As Kirstie recalls: