#10 – Tuesday, 26th May 2020

We remain at Implementation Level Two for both Homes with no Symptomatic Residents or Staff. We still just have one Client who tested Covid-19 Positive but who remains Asymptomatic , and is being retestested this Thursday. The two Carers looking after her continue to just look after this one Client, and both remain Asymptomatic themselves. Interestingly, since the last Newsletter, we have learnt that recovering Covid-19 Patients who continue to Test Positive are thought to be Non-Infectious, suggesting the source of our Client’s infection was not our Symptomatic Carer , who herself remains well.

NHS Support & PPE Supplies

NHS support and PPE supplies continue to be good.

Testing

At Nettlestead, all Staff save for one have been tested, with one result awaited, and with everyone so far testing Negative. All Residents have been tested, save for one who cannot be tested for medical reasons, and all results have come back Negative.

At Priors Mead , all Residents and all Staff have been tested, with all results Negative.

At HomeCare, twenty-four Staff Members have now been tested and have come back Negative, and a further five have their tests booked or are waiting for their results to come back. We continue to chase Bromley for the testing of all Clients not already tested.

Nettlestead

• Nettlestead currently has one Staff Member Self-Isolating for twelve weeks.
• CQC are now starting to clear their backlog, including Holly’s confirmation interview as Registered Manager. We are delighted to say that she passed!
• Highfield Junior School have added us to their weekly parents’ newsletter for all the letters, pictures and poems we have been getting.
• Thank you to Peter Dalton for the chocolate delivery!
• We are having our bake-and-buy sale on Wednesday 27th for Alzheimer’s UK, with Staff busily baking in their spare time!
• Residents made the most of the lovely weather and enjoyed a picnic garden-party during the week.
• We sadly lost Betty Wooldridge, which was not Covid related.

HomeCare

HomeCare has two Staff Members Self-Isolating for twelve weeks.

We are delighted to say that Lauren passed her CQC interview too, and has successfully been confirmed as the Registered Manager for HomeCare.

The two Staff Members that are looking after our Covid-19 Client continue to do a fantastic job: thank you very much for your dedication and courage.

We have had a donation of PPE from Bromley Council .
● All of our Staff Members are continuing to go above and beyond for all of our HomeCare Clients .
● We still have a number of clients in self isolation but we are looking forward to their return.
● We are continuing to carry out assessments for new Clients, and ensuring that we have a detailed
Covid-19 exposure background completed.

Resilience

• We have completed our audit of Staff working in more than one care location and have planned how to manage any changes. We are now just waiting for Social Services to advise on funding for this.
• We have agreed to go ahead with the Correlation Machines trial which will initially focus on Staff Volunteers. By monitoring changes in each person’s heart rate, the Company’s Algorithms should be able to predict if a member of staff is becoming unwell up to five days ahead of when it might otherwise be apparent, and will also give valuable data in regard to our communities by comparing the data of a number of volunteers. Whilst the Residents will not be joining in at this stage, through the additional level of protection this monitoring provides to their ‘gate keepers’, the Staff, they too should benefit. Once the trial is over we hope that the company will then be able to provide a solution for us to monitor our Residents’ Health more closely too so that earlier interventions can be made as needed.

Suggestions

Suggestions continue to be welcome. Please share them with us by emailing covid-19@nightingales.co.uk .

Thank you all for your continued support and understanding.

Nick & Sarah Bruce
nick.bruce@nightingales.co.uk
sarah.bruce@nightingales.co.uk