Current status – our home continues to remain Covid free since March 2020
Mary and Joseph House have put in place a range of rigorous measures to help reduce the risk of COVID-19 infection within our homes, and to protect the physical and emotional wellbeing of our residents and the staff team around them.
National Lockdown – Visiting – latest information
• We are monitoring the situation on a daily basis, following public health advice.
• We are currently facilitating Window visits – the visiting space is used by only one resident and visiting party at a time, and is subject to regular enhanced cleaning between each visit, visitor to sanitise hands and wear face covering throughout the visit.
• Each of our residents has a visiting plan that is based on an assessment of risk of contracting COVID-19, as well as the potential benefits of visits, we will work with residents, families and health professionals to strike a good balance between the benefits of visiting and the infection risks that arise from increased interactions of visitors, residents and staff.
What are we actively doing?
Reducing infection risk
Infection control is vital to keep everyone inside our homes safe and healthy. And with this in mind we have put in place a number of enhanced measures to help reduce our risk:
• Enhanced cleaning – we have increased our housekeeping team and the regularity of all our cleaning and sanitising procedures.
• Plentiful PPE – we ensure we have enough PPE to stock our care home for at least a month.
• Testing – All staff members and consenting residents are subject to regular temperature checks and COVID tests to ensure cases are picked up early.
• High staff to resident ratio – we have enough staff on the ground to maintain the safety and security of our homes, even in the case of illness absence.
• Flu vaccination – We received the Gold Flu Vaccination Award run by NHS England with an uptake of 86% of our staff
Infection Control Lead
The home has a lead for infection control that is able to co-ordinate staff training and be responsible for ensuring that the home is using the latest guidance from the daily evolving government guidelines on care home safety, as well as implementing important operational changes to the home, we continue with a very high standard of infection control and prevention and provides and maintains a clean, odour free environment, despite the extra pressures due to COVID-19
We are proud that the home has succeeded in keeping residents and staff safe and maintained the high standards
Contact with loved ones
How we’re keeping our care homes safe
The lockdowns and visiting restrictions have had an impact on our residents and their loved ones.
In order to facilitate meaningful contact:
• Our amazing therapeutic staff have pulled out all the stops to provide our residents with a programme of daily activities to keep them active and stimulated.
• We have a designated “residents room” with a computer that has Teams, Zoom and Skype to enable them to stay in touch with loved ones
Supporting new residents
We understand that this can be an anxious and uncertain time and we will do everything in our power to ensure that the transition to their new home goes as smoothly as possible
All new residents will have to isolate for 14 day in our dedicated Rainbow Suite, to protect existing and new residents and staff to continue to be COVID free, they will be provided with information and reassurance during their stay