As the Covid-19 situation continues to evolve, we have been continuously monitoring the official advice and responding accordingly. We have acted quickly and decisively to manage the potential impact of the virus, in line with guidance from the Government, and our local authority partners. We have implemented enhanced infection control protocols across all our homes to ensure the safety of all service users and staff. Providing updates and issuing instructions based on official Government advice, backed up by the Chief Medical Officer, avoiding hearsay, rhetoric and opinion.
In addition to this we have replaced physical meetings with skype and telephone conferences to ensure we continue to provide business as usual whilst also safeguarding all service users and staff by eliminating all non-essential visits, greatly reducing the risk of introducing the virus into the homes. Any essential visitors have been asked and observed by staff to carry out enhanced infection control protocols during their visits.
In addition to this we have produced specific Covid-19 Risk Assessments for all our service users, which highlight any additional vulnerability that they may have due to underlying health conditions so that staff are clear about how to best keep them safe and what to do if they show any symptoms.
Whilst contact with family and friends is an integral part of our service, individual service managers have been asked to review access to their homes to mitigate the risks for everyone, including staff and how cross infection may impact on our ability to maintain safe staffing levels. For this reason, the general consensus at the moment is to restrict access as much as possible whilst we develop a greater clarity on this fast-developing situation, in the best interest of everyone.