TBC COVID-19 Safe Procedures
- Socially distanced communal areas
- Safe admissions with COVID-19 testing
- Safe visiting arrangements in place with special considerations for end of life care.
- Infection Prevention and Control Procedures approved by CQC and Local Authority
- Staff COVID-19 testing weekly and resident testing every 28 days or if displaying symptoms
At Harwood House Care Home the health and wellbeing of our residents and staff team is of the utmost importance. We are currently rated as Good by the CQC and aim to be outstanding. We have had excellent infection prevention and control processes in place for a long time. These existing and new measures have helped to reduce the risk of COVID-19 infection within our home, and to protect the physical and emotional wellbeing of our residents and our staff team.
What are we actively doing?
Reducing infection risk Infection prevention and control is vital to keeping everyone inside our home safe and healthy. And with this in mind we have put in place a number of enhanced measures approved by CQC and the Local Authority to help reduce our risk:
Enhanced cleaning We have always been complemented how clean Harwood increased the regularity of all our cleaning and sanitising procedures and provided extra training where required.
Plentiful PPE We have enough PPE to stock our care home for at least a month.
Testing All team members and consenting residents are subject to regular temperature checks and COVID tests. Staff COVID testing is carried out weekly and resident testing is carried out every 28 days to ensure cases are picked up early.
High team member to resident ratio We’ve actively recruited to ensure we have enough staff on the ground to maintain the safety and security of our homes, even in the case of illness absence.
Enabling meaningful contact
We recognise that lockdowns and visiting restrictions have had an impact on our residents and their families and friends. And while this has been necessary to maintain distance to keep everybody safe, we want to do more to help families and friends come together in person once more.
In order to facilitate meaningful contact we have:
Put in place measures to allow residents to continue with a programme of daily activities to keep them active and stimulated.
Invested in our homes to provide safe visiting facilities for the future.
Introduced ‘Enhanced Visitor Protocols’ after extensive consultations. EVPs allow family members to visit their loved ones where there is a demonstrable clinical need and where the risks associated with visiting can be mitigated or to support the move-in process with the minimum of distress.
Supporting new residents
Our home is now accepting new residents, whether for respite care or on more permanent residential, nursing or dementia care.
While this is ultimately positive, with families who require support to look after a loved one now able access the care they need, it can be an anxious time too.
In order to make the transition as smooth and risk-free as possible, we’ve established a framework to provide personalised support to both the resident and their family members. It uses established methods to protect existing and new residents from COVID-19, while making sure all parties are able to get the information and reassurance required, and facilitates family support where people are distressed during the very early days, safely.