Inside care homes: visits, vaccines and hope for the future

Our home has always been very much part of the community and in normal circumstances it’s very vibrant, with lots of volunteers coming and going. Our residents are very active too – for instance, we have a choir that goes out singing and a gardening club that exhibits their produce at local shows. All of this stopped when we closed our doors in March and the home feels very quiet.

But now our first lateral flow tests have arrived and we’ve started our programme of staff training to be able to administer them. We’ve told families that unfortunately we won’t be able to bring this in before Christmas, as the logistics are challenging, but we expect to be up and running with face-to-face indoor visits early in the New Year.

This will be the first time we’ve been able to do this since March, aside from enabling visits for those who are at the end of life.

For those who haven’t been able to see their loved ones for many months, their first visit will be very emotional

At the end of the first lockdown, we began to do outside visits, but as we’re such a large home, to make sure it’s fair for everyone, these could only happen once a fortnight. There was no physical contact, with visits happening behind a screen. For those who haven’t been able to see their loved ones for many months, their first visit will be very emotional, and we need to appreciate how they will feel.

We’ve had to manage the expectations of families in an honest way. Some have seen the news and social media and thought it would all happen immediately. But this isn’t a five-minute fix and it will take a lot of work to do it properly. I completely understand how they feel. Not visiting has been hard, especially for those who usually came every day. We’ve really had to look after the relatives too. Fortunately, we had very good relationships with them before this happened and they trust us.

We’re also preparing for vaccination, filling out consent forms. The sense is it will happen quite quickly, so we want to be ready. We’ve given out basic information, so residents understand what’s happening. I think they want anything that will make this situation better. It will be lovely to get a different kind of life back into the home.

The testing regime needs a lot of staff involvement and we want to have a regular group of people doing the tests, so they can build up expertise. To enable the number of visits we need, it’s likely that this will become the fulltime job of those staff who are trained. We’re fortunate in that we have enough staff to be able to do this, but I know other care homes are in much more challenging circumstances.

Testing station

We will be setting up a testing station within the home and visitors will be able to have their results after half-an-hour. If someone tests positive, we then have to administer a further PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test and send that away, while the person goes home to isolate for 10 days. There will be a lot of disappointment if that happens and we’ll need to support everyone.

We’re getting people with different skills coming into the care home

We also need to backfill the posts of those involved in testing, so we can make sure residents are well cared for, have good days and feel safe. Throughout the pandemic, we have continued to recruit staff, attracting some who have lost their jobs. We’re getting people with different skills coming into the care home, which is great because they have very fresh eyes and are able to bring something different.

New visiting rules and the prospect of vaccination has given everyone hope that things are moving on a little. We’ve been in a static situation for such a long time and often it’s felt like one step forwards, two steps back. It’s been hard for anyone to see the light at the end of a very long tunnel – but hopefully that’s changing now. 

Jo-Anne Wilson