Family Visiting Arrangements at all Homes From 22 June 2020

Dear all,

Once again, thank you for your continued support and encouragement during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is greatly appreciated and makes such a difference to our homes. We have been overwhelmed by the love and well wishes from many of you and we thank you for that.

At the end of March we closed all of our homes to visitors and restricted access to essential medical and maintenance visits only. We have closely followed the government advice since then and have responded appropriately to this whilst maintaining our person-centred care ethos for our residents. We recognise that this has been extremely difficult for you all and we thank you for your understanding and patience.

As the lockdown is now easing across the UK we feel it is appropriate to find a solution to enable you to see your loved ones once again. Facilitating the reconnection of meaningful relationships promotes the positive mental health and wellbeing of our residents and therefore it is important for us to make this possible once again. It is essential though that we do this slowly, cautiously and sensibly so we do not compromise the safety of our residents, our colleagues and you!

With the agreement of our board of trustees, we have created parameters and set criteria that must be met in all our homes to enable visiting to commence. Each home has created a safe visiting area, ensuring that the set criteria relating to health and safety and infection control are met.

God willing, as an organisation we will begin visiting from week commencing Monday 22nd June, however, the start date will vary across all locations. Following the individual start dates, each home will begin a two week trial period to allow for an informed review at the end of this and any changes to the process to be made. During these two weeks all homes will manage their visits identically to ensure that each resident is visited once and governance is consistent and thorough. In order for us to carefully manage visits there will be set days and times in each home. Details for your specific home and how to book visiting slots are shown at the bottom of this letter.

Visiting criteria…

• One visit per resident/couple every two weeks
• Maximum of two visitors at any time and both visitors must be from the same household
• Visitors in the clinically extremely vulnerable group who are shielding must not visit
• Visitors in the moderately vulnerable group who are shielding should not visit
• Those who have been told to isolate by the NHS Test and Trace service must not visit
• Visiting time will be a maximum of 30 minutes to enable a 30 minute turnaround of area
• Please do not arrive more than 10 minutes before your appointment time
• Visitors must wait in their cars until instructed by a member of staff
• If arriving earlier or later than the appointment time the length of appointment cannot be extended
• Any items for the residents must be left with a member of staff

We realise that these parameters are highly restrictive but we feel we need to put them in place to keep everyone safe and to comply with current guidance. We would appreciate your observance of these and recognise that with larger families communication between you will be absolutely necessary before booking.

If at any time we feel that the safety of residents, colleagues and visitors is being compromised we reserve the right to withdraw or amend these arrangements without notice. Reasons for doing so may include (list not exhaustive):

• Government advice changing
• An outbreak of COVID-19 in the home – we will need to stop visiting for 14 days
• A suspected case of COVID-19 in the home – we will need to pause visiting whilst testing is done
• The ‘R’ number increasing nationwide or in specific areas
• The health and safety and infection control measures not being stringent enough or being followed by visitors

In the event of any of the above, unfortunately booked visits will be cancelled, not postponed.

During your visit…

There will be a member of staff supporting you throughout your visit. On arrival, they will take your temperature to ensure that you are not running a fever and unintentionally bringing the virus into the home. If you have any concerns about undergoing a temperature check, please call the home before you visit. They will also ask you a few questions about your health and any contact with possible sources of the coronavirus in the last 14 days. Please be aware that staff members will be wearing PPE. There will be a provision of PPE for you to wear should you choose to. The staff member will accompany you to the visiting area and ask you to wash your hands. There will be no access to toilet facilities during your visit, so please make the necessary arrangements before you arrive at the home.

A staff member will be with your relative throughout the visit to support as necessary. As there will be a clear screen between you to ensure infection control measures are met, communication will be different to usual so this staff member will be able to support. At the end of your visit, you will be accompanied once again to your car and the visiting area will be cleaned thoroughly in preparation for the next visitor.

Whilst we acknowledge that this form of visiting is far from ideal, it is currently the only way that we feel it is possible to implement it safely for all those concerned. There is a significant cost to Christadelphian Care Homes in setting up these visits both in the initial cost of creating the pods and in the ongoing significant investment of extra staff to safely facilitate the visits. Therefore, it will be under constant review by the trustees.

Once again, thank you for your support and prayers. We will continue to update you over the coming weeks. If any of you would like to provide your email address so that we can keep in contact with you directly please send this to .

Of course all of us pray that the return of the Lord Jesus is very soon – “even so come Lord Jesus”.

Yours sincerely,

Jeremy Brown | Managing Director – Christadelphian Care Homes