At Canterbury Care, the health, wellbeing and safety of our residents is at the heart of everything we do. Although we have made many changes to the way work, our teams continue to ensure that life is enjoyable and fulfilling for those in our care. With well-established infection control procedures and a dedicated clinical governance and quality team to oversee these, we have been able to react quickly and safely manage the pandemic across our care homes.
You can read how we have been using data-driven technology to ensure our care homes remain COVID-19 Safe by clicking here.
We were delighted to hear the central and devolved governments’ announcements allowing us to reunite residents with a nominated visitor in England and two designated visitors in Scotland. However, we must make sure that we reintroduce visiting in the safest possible way. We will be revisiting our dynamic risk assessments and guidance on visiting over the next week, working with each of our homes to support them with the logistics of testing visitors and minimizing the risks of extra traffic through each home.
The situation at each home varies greatly due to its layout and the space available for safe testing and visiting. The manager of your relative’s care home will contact you by letter, email or telephone when the new visiting arrangements are ready, advising the start date, booking process and infection control procedures visitors will need to follow. This will include information on the lateral flow tests that nominated visitors will be required to take.
Although we are working towards the 8th of March as our start date, we kindly ask that you bear with us until we are confident that each home can welcome nominated visitors safely and comfortably for our residents, their relatives and our staff.
For the most up-to-date visiting arrangements for your local care home, please contact your home manager.
In exceptional cases, such as when a resident is at the very end of life visits will be supported. Please contact the home manager directly to discuss this process.
As you know, the situation can change rapidly, especially during the winter months. We must be ready to adapt to changes in national and local guidance, local infection rates, and any confirmed cases of COVID-19 within a care home. These factors may lead to the home being closed to all visitors as a precautionary measure at short notice.
In this case, any planned visits will need to be cancelled. The home manager will be in contact with you to confirm any changes to our visiting policy when they occur.
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 pandemic.
Through the use of phone and video calls, and where applicable, the care home’s Facebook page, we will ensure that you remain in contact with your loved one, and they remain in contact with the wider community.
Currently, we are working with the NHS and local public health teams to get the Covid-19 vaccination to our residents and staff as quickly as possible. While we welcome the news of the national vaccination programme, we recognize that it will take some time to roll out to the wider population. Please bear with us while this is in progress, as we are confident this is going to make significant improvements to our visiting arrangements.
Lateral flow Covid-19 testing is being introduced to allow more meaningful visits for residents of care homes and their loved ones. There has been much excitement at this news, and we too look forward to the day when loved ones can meet with fewer restrictions.
Dedicated team members have received full training in lateral flow testing and this is now fully in place for our staff twice a week. However, there are many logistical challenges for us to overcome before we can start testing visitors. Testing areas must meet very specific requirements. While procedures for safely administering tests and allowing appropriate space and time for visitors to wait for results must be established for each home.
We ask you to please bear with us while we take some time to form our plans to introduce lateral flow testing for visitors. We must ensure that this is done in a safe way that will not impact the levels of care we deliver for our residents.
We will continue to accept new residents into many of our homes to support those in the community who require care.
To safeguard the health and wellbeing of our residents and care teams, we will carry out preadmission 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.
If you would like to make an enquiry please click here to find the contact details for your local care home.
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 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.
We thank you for your co-operation and for considering the health and wellbeing of our residents at this time.
If you would like to know more about Covid-19, please follow the links below.
