Present:
From Askham ~ Salma, Aliyyah, Jo, Priscilla, Karen, Michelle, Sara N, Bev, Anju, Keren
Relatives ~ Lloyd Legister, Pam, Roger George, Robert Clutterbuck, Paul Mossman, Jeanette Blandford, Susan Taylor, Christina Crosby, Steve Luff, William Godfrey

The meeting opened with a thanks to everyone for participating and for working with us through zoom; it is great to have this technology to be able to connect. The purpose of this meeting is really to provide relatives with an update on how things are at Askham, and hopefully provide some reassurance – especially in light of the media coverage of care homes currently. Please feel free to ask any questions over this call – we want to be open and share our approaches with families.

Smiles and Frowns – Questions from any relatives

Various feedback comments from relatives regarding staff:

• Thank you
• Superb efforts
• Appreciate the calls to keep me updated – both responding to my calls and also proactive ones from the nurse
• There is a degree of normality on the calls which is appreciated
• Emails have been helpful
• Good to have the information and the updates – especially the personal updates to us specifically
• Credit to the staff

Thank you to relatives for all the support and the donations; plus the time for face calls as well. This all makes a very big difference.

We at Askham have been lucky thanks to the diligence of staff.

Covid-19 update from Askham

Against the backdrop of the spotlight on care homes, we would like to share with relatives our current status and our policies and approaches we have taken. We have followed government guidance where it has been clear but there has been some unclear guidance and we have had to make our own decisions.

We started with the lock down earlier than many other homes, this was a tough decision to take as we know how important visits our to you and to the residents, but it has set us in good stead and given us confidence in our decision making.

Current policies are that all homes are being contained, with bare minimum movement between buildings on site. GPs are in regular contact and conducting appointments by video conference.

We have had a positive experience of working with hospitals and have been insisting on tests and test results before accepting admissions. We have refused admissions of those potential residents who have tested positive until they have a confirmed negative test complete. Hospital discharge teams have been working well with us on these matters and have respected our policy on this.

Despite the testing, we are also ‘barrier nursing’ all new admissions for 14 days as a belt & braces approach to ensure we are minimising risk.

Barrier nursing for 7 or 14 days is also being applied if a resident goes into a hospital for a planned procedure. As an aside, our recent experience of this has been positive, with a resident going to hospital for a planned procedure, being met by hospital staff in full PPE etc. We can not fault to process followed.

We are checking staff temperature daily and staff who are working in resident areas are wearing masks when on shift. We have had a fairly consistent 10-12% of staff off work for the last few weeks. This is manageable overall and nowhere near as challenging as other homes have experienced. We must commend staff who:

• Are picking up many shifts to ensure there is no shortfall – and we are incentivising / acknowledging this by offering a 20% enhancement for hours worked over contracted hours.
• Have collectively committed to avoid us needing to use agency staff (who may be a transmission risk) so far, preferring to cover the workload internally
• Keep spirits high across the shift and continue to sing and dance and smile

PPE: this has not been easy but we have managed to maintain a reasonable supply by working with other care homes and bringing in supplies from abroad. Prices are significantly higher (for example masks would normally by 7-10p each and we are paying 65p each) however we feel it’s important to prioritise this. Of course this is not sustainable, and we are seeking support of the Local Authorities and CCG for funding help.

We hold daily calls between the managers and leads every morning to manage any new situations arising and ensure everyone is aware of any changes to policy or any new information.

Training updates

We don’t know how long this lockdown period is going to last, and we initially went into ‘crisis’ mode where we stopped doing much non-essential / non-urgent work – however this is not sustainable and we need to find new ways to do our work safely. Training is one such area – we have shifted all training to take place by zoom so staff do not miss out on having their needs met.

Staffing updates

We are continuing to recruit staff to Askham, again this being an area that we had temporarily stopped but given we may be in this context for a while yet we do need to continue. Interviews are done by zoom and then induction is also done by zoom prior to starting on shift. New starters are asked to have 7 days isolation before starting work.

Successes to celebrate

We are trying wherever possible to keep a focus on the positives. Some examples:

• Hall CQC report: Good across all five domains; well done to Jo, Keren and the team at Hall
• Place Provider Information Return submitted: no further action from the CQC; great news
• Rehab team: completely re-jigged to provide rehab across both Court and Grove in a safe way. Gym spaces created in both homes, and this has resulted in more direct rehab input for residents which is a great learning. We are also seeing a much greater knowledge transfer between rehab and care teams by operating in the same space. This has been really positive and we will likely continue this even after the virus period has passed
• Omi projecter: delivery of this taken last week and it is proving invaluable with the few residents who have so far used it. Thanks to all who donated. We are glad we were able to get this item delivered and into use despite these testing times.
• Activities: These are continuing through the homes. We had a blip during which a large number of the activities team was off work, however we are now back in a safe rhythm which is working well. Here also we are seeing a much greater team working between staff to ensure that activities and light hearted engagement is a shared responsibility across the whole team.
• Skype: this has been a huge success. Thank you to all relatives who have been supporting this. We ensure there were tablets in all the homes to enable this to happen.
• Overall: staff have been brilliant – hats off to them. Thank you also to all relatives and other community groups who have been supportive through sending letters, cards, and practical things such as visors and ear savers.

AOB

We will continue with these quarterly, and continue with emails more frequently.

Question raised about our plans for when lockdown is lifted. There are many ways this could happen and we will take steer from the government guidance that will no doubt be issued, but bearing in mind that government has sometimes acted late or changed policy in short order, we will be very cautious about any easing of our restrictions.

We are aware that it is when we lift the our restrictions that we may open ourselves up to the greatest risk and therefore we will be in no rush to do this. We do want to re-unite residents and families as quickly as we can, however we will be doing this in the safest way possible and therefore are likely to take our time. There are models we have considered – limited visiting hours, or visits only in some shared parts of Askham and not in residents quarters etc – but these are only ideas. We will need to wait and see how things unfold.