Posted By Clarke Kent the 2nd They can smoke in there personnel rooms from what i can understand, but even that was under some debate.

Posted By J Knight Craig, Agree with Charley; smoking rooms can be used by Service Users and their guests. They have to be more or less 'sterile', and shouldn't be used for recreational purposes apart from smoking, so no TVs, no bookshelves and so on. The idea is that people use them only for a fag and do their socialising elsewhere, though where that fits into normalisation and so on I have no idea, John PS I am assuming at the moment that bedrooms can be 'designated', but they would also need to have external ventilation and automatically closing smoke sealed doors.

Posted By J Knight And finally, back to the original post. We already have problems with staff refusing to support smokers; we have even had regular smokers refuse. This is potentially a serious problem for us, as we are not willing to compel workers to work in smokey areas. Other employers are, and this has been discussed on this forum (do a search), but we aren't. Some of our Service Users have advanced neurological diseases, and literally need the cigarettes holding for them, hence the problem if all our staff refuse. We use smoking aids where we can, but in a handful of cases we can't; and that would be part of my general advice. Use smoking aids, and also get smoking cessation people in. About half the population at any one time wants to stop smoking, the same is true for people in care homes. Ignore the staff who say 'what about their rights' and 'its all they've got'. If your staff are healthcare professionals they should be promoting health, not smokers' rights (this is what one of our head nurses said to me, at any rate), and if smoking is 'all they've got' then find them something else to do. I'm not advocating forcing people to give up, but they should have access to the same services that people in the wider community do, John