As lockdown restrictions are gradually eased across the United Kingdom, safeguarding the health and wellbeing of our residents and teams remains our highest priority. With older people in care homes among the most vulnerable to contracting the COVID-19 virus, we have been taking preventative measures to protect those in our care and employment throughout the pandemic. This has included closing all of our care homes to all visitors.
Visiting restrictions are reviewed daily by our COVID-19 action team, and decisions are informed by national guidance, the UK Government COVID-19 alert levels, and an individual risk assessment of each home.
Following the release of the government’s guidance on visiting care homes during coronavirus, we wanted to let you know that the current visiting arrangements at each of our care homes have not changed.
Where possible, Safe Outside Visits can take place in a designated area of the garden dependent on the weather.
For the safety of everyone, outside visiting will only be possible in homes that have not had any cases of confirmed people with symptoms, or a positive test for the Coronavirus among either residents or staff within the last 28-day period.
The manager of your loved one’s care home will be in contact with you to confirm when their home qualifies for pre-booked outside visits under this arrangement.
In exceptional cases, such as when a resident is at the very end of life, an application may be made for special permission to enter the care home. Please contact the home manager directly to discuss this process and the conditions that must be observed for this to happen.
We are complying with the government’s advice in respect of the isolation requirements for both residents and staff. At the same time, our head office and management teams are also taking all the necessary precautions to delay the spread of this virus. This includes the provision of home-working where this is possible.
We will continue to review these steps daily and will update this webpage with our latest position.
Please download our guide to visiting our care homes here.
Restricted visiting does not mean you have to lose touch. We have contingencies in place to ensure that you can still speak to, and in many cases still see relatives in our care during the outbreak. Through the use of phone and video calls, and where applicable a care home’s social media channels, we will ensure that you remain in contact with loved ones, and they remain in contact with the wider community.
We are also regularly writing to our residents’ relatives to keep them informed of any changes or updates to our plans.
In addition to restricting visiting at our care homes, we are also committed to:
We are continuing to accept new residents into our homes to support those in the community who are in need of care.
To safeguard the health and wellbeing of our residents and care teams, we will carry out pre-admission assessments remotely by telephone, video call, or email. This is to ensure that any new admissions are safe, appropriate, and do not put our residents and staff at risk.
The majority of our care homes are open to new admissions at this time, while others are working to support the NHS and local health and social care authorities at this unprecedented time of demand.
If you would like to make an enquiry please click here to find the contact details for your local Canterbury Care Home.
It has always been our view that getting out of lockdown would be more complicated than going into it. Clearly all residents in our homes are highly vulnerable, as are many of their loved ones. We need to ensure that the actions we take do not significantly increase the rate of infections.
We are acting on the advice and guidelines provided by Public Health England, Public Health Wales, and Health Protection Scotland. As the situation changes, we will constantly review and adapt our approach. We will update this page in line with the most current Government information and advice.
If you have any further questions about our response to COVID-19 or the situation at your local home, simply call the Care Home Manager or Person in Charge at the home.
We thank you for your co-operation and for considering the health and wellbeing of our residents at this time.
Want to know more about Covid-19? Please have a look at some of the links below.
