The additional safety measures in place on deliveries to Bailiwick care and residential homes are helping to reduce the risk of Covid transmission as well as helping to keep restrictions on residents to a minimum.
During the last lockdown, many residents had to isolate in their rooms. This time round, although homes are currently closed to visitors, life is pretty much carrying on as normal inside. Residents are able to eat communally in the dining rooms, and social activities are taking place, albeit in smaller groups with social distancing.
One thing that is enabling this, by minimising the risk of Covid-19 entering a home, is an ongoing appeal to friends and relatives not to deliver non-essential items to residents. This is on top of strict hygiene controls and social distancing among other current safety measures.
Any essential deliveries are currently being quarantined for 72 hours before entering a home. This also applies to incoming mail. Non-essentials, such as treats for residents or newspapers, should not be delivered at this time.
Registration and Inspection Officer Vanessa Penney commented: “We want to reassure relatives of residents that at the moment they are managing to go about their days with little restrictions inside of the home, which is obviously very good for everyone’s wellbeing”.
“We are of course very sorry that we are not currently able to welcome visitors and we know this is very hard for those that can’t see their loved ones. We hope you understand the reasons and we hope this won’t be for long. But we wish to reassure you that life inside the homes is good”.
Residents are still able to eat together, with some care homes doing two meal sittings to ensure social distancing. A range of activities are still taking place and residents are socialising in lounges, with social distancing. Those that wish to stay in their rooms are able to do so.
Vanessa said: “We appreciate some friends and relatives might have had daily or weekly routines of delivering treats or other welfare packages to relatives and we are sorry that this is having to temporarily stop. But it is worth noting that many of the homes have little shops that might stock some of these items that you like to bring, so look into what facilities a home has available”.
Vanessa added that homes may be able to add particular items to their bulk orders, which again minimises transmission risk by limiting the number of deliveries coming in.
Residents that read daily newspapers are being encouraged to subscribe to digital editions or use online news sources. Many homes are also using iPads and WhatsApp groups to help facilitate residents’ ongoing communication with friends and relatives.
