The story of how all 16 of our homes currently remain Covid-19 free.

Jul 13, 2020

We want to tell the story of life in our care homes for older people during the virus pandemic and to explain how our company currently remain Covid – 19 free in all of our sixteen care homes.

During the early stages of the pandemic we decided, in consultation with staff and residents, to lockdown the home to visitors. We also cancelled all none urgent servicing within the home to reduce the number of people who may enter the facility. We ensured that residents and their relatives were kept fully informed and updated and our homes went to great lengths to consult with their residents and listen to their comments and what they wanted, after all it is their home.

Critically as a company, we made sure that we had access to Personal Protective Equipment for our staff, at no stage did we run low on stock and we even managed to purchase additional face coverings for our staff and relatives to wear if they were using public transport.

We as a company set up a crisis management team that has responsibility for developing and sharing all information relating to the virus. From the very beginning all our staff had live access to all the latest information, this really helped them understand what they need to do to keep safe and to understand the early symptoms of the virus in order that they were able to take time off from work and self-isolate if they became symptomatic.

During the lockdown period our homes made sure that no admissions were made into the home unless the person tested negative for the virus. On occasion this was a real challenge as sometimes the hospitals would refuse to test or indeed informed us that testing was not necessary. However, our homes remained firm on our commitment to protect their esidents and staff, eventually the hospitals relented and carried out a test.

Now, life in our care homes has been a surreal experience for our residents and staff during the lockdown period, but as we anticipated our wonderful staff and residents have risen to all the challenges and have created an environment that is fun, stimulating and safe! New ways of communicating with relatives have been introduced via WhatsApp, SKYPE & ZOOM. We purchased additional electronic tablets, and our homes made full use of Facebook and twitter.  Relatives have really appreciated the updates we have placed on these devices.

As is tradition with the British Bulldog spirit, the local communities of our homes and supportive relatives or residents and staff have pulled together to support our homes during the lockdown period. They have received fabulous free gifts, such as trays of buns and fancies, chocolate hampers, breads, old fashioned sweet treats and much, much more. These acts of kindness have shone a light in a time of need and have had a massive positive impact for residents and staff.

We as a company have provided many gifts and treats for the staff to show how much they are appreciated, this included a wonderful poem written for the staff, a fabulous banner which the homes placed on the outside of their home stating how outstanding the staff are who work there and we do our weekly Pearls of Wisdom trivia quiz every week online that all the homes take part it together. 

To conclude, we wish to state how very proud and privileged we are to have such wonderful dedicated staff, who through adversity and uncertainty have continued to ensure that our residents were cared for to the highest standards ensuring that we continued to love , to laugh and experience new things, even during lockdown, they were never down ! and we continue to keep the virus at bay!

– Pearlcare 

Watch our video below that we made for our fabulous homes during lockdown…