We really cannot underestimate the level of pain people had to go through during the lockdown, being kept away from their loved ones. But the beautiful thing that came out of it was how deeply we got to know our residents.
Another initiative which we introduced during the restrictions and have continued, is the idea of mourning with relatives. What have you put in place to make good ideas happen more of the time?
It was wonderful to do all these lovely things together, for our residents, and we all had a sense of ownership. It made us feel proud of the exciting and engaging things we could come up with.
So far, we’ve made some useful progress on ‘little’ things as well as quite significant areas of how we operate. For instance, you often hear of the ‘little things that matter’, and how this can make your day.
But with the restrictions being eased, we went back to our residents, we organised forums during a dedicated period of consultation, to ask detailed questions about how they felt during the lockdown
As a way of getting back to some sense of normality, we asked our residents what they missed the most, and almost everyone said it was going outside and seeing people.
The need to continue to make things happen for our residents gave us a challenge to rise to and being able to rise to the challenge has brought a kind of aspiration to take on difficult tasks.
I realised that my reaction was part of a normal response to stress, being put in such a traumatic situation, and challenged in a way that I had never been before.
The COVID-19 Recovery and Rehabilitation project was kindly funded by The Rayne Foundation to help care homes share with each other what they are doing to help individuals living, dying, visiting and working in care homes for older people to move on from COVID-19....
As many can appreciate, through the lockdown, care homes experienced the loss of many residents in quick succession. Sometimes this happened whilst they were in hospital, and there was no opportunity to say a proper goodbye.