Nettlestead, Priors Mead and HomeCare are all at Implementation Level Two.

Out-of-Home Visits

We don’t normally send out a Newsletter on Bank Holidays, but we only just learned on Saturday that Residents were to be allowed to leave the Homes from tomorrow, 4th May, and thought everyone would want to know ahead of time what we are doing to accommodate this wonderful news.

Our understanding is that, from tomorrow:

• • Residents will be able to visit their Family’s or a Friend’s Garden or Take a Walk, either with one of our Carers or one of their two Nominated Visitors without having to Self-Isolate when they return. We will therefore start to take any Residents who would like to go out for Walks whenever the weather is suitable, and Nominated Visitors can now arrange to take them to either spend some time in their own Gardens or out for a Walk.
  • For these Out-of-Home Visits, the Resident is allowed to go indoors to use the Nominated Visitor’s Toilet, but must otherwise remain outdoors, and Weather is therefore clearly an important factor.
  • The Rule of Six does Not apply. Only the Resident, Nominated Visitor and Carer, if appropriate, should be present for the Visit.
  • Where the Weather is not suitable the Out-of-Home Visit would have to be deferred until the Weather is more suitable.
  • A Risk Assessment will have to be done for each and there will be an E-Form for this purpose. Each Risk Assessment will be relative to each Resident and will obviously take account of the Weather, but also other factors such as the Vaccination Status of those they will be spending time with.

• We understand that Current Lockdown Rules, such as Social Distancing etc should be followed.

• As the British Weather is so unpredictable, we are not limiting the number of Out-of-Home Visits that can happen in any one day, but may ask you to change the times you Collect or Return your Loved One so our Staff have time to prepare them and resettle them on their return. It may also be necessary to ask you to defer to another day when there are simply too many Out-of-Home Visits to safely accommodate all requests.

The links to the Out-of-Home Visit Forms are below, and which should be completed for Each and Every Visit, including regrettably any deferred ones as key details may change.

Nettlestead – Out-of-Home Visits-NS

Priors Mead – Out-of-Home Visits-PM

Nettlestead

• We would like to welcome two new carers to the Nettlestead Team; Yvonne, who joins us for nights and Shanie who joins us for days.
• Shout out to Joan who won this week’s Bingo! We have noticed that things are getting quite competitive here at Nettlestead!
• Jane has been planning a range of activities for the coming week including Baking, Giant Quizzes and a Night at the Movies.
• Joe Phillips is making a special Covid-Secure visit to us on Friday. Please keep your eyes peeled for pictures on Facebook.
• Jane is planning to get us out and about this week. Watch out for the Resident’s Car which will be taking to the roads for a drive around to enjoy the spring blossom.
• We are delighted that Vera has decided to extend her stay with us for a further week and hope she continues to enjoy her time with us:-)

Priors Mead

• We’ve celebrated a cluster of Birthdays recently with two more this week – we love celebrating these special days with our Residents! Warmest wishes to each of you.
• We would like to welcome our new Night Carer, Emma, to the Priors Mead Team!
• Enid will be joining our Residents from Wednesday for a respite stay – We hope you have a great time with us.
• Each Resident enjoyed painting their own Pot for their Sunflowers which have been moved outdoors where they are doing really well.
• On Friday night we held a Virtual Campfire Evening with Anthony providing the musical entertainment via zoom. We made S’mores and sang along to Campfire Songs!
• We have two students, Darra and Frankie, joining us for regular Bingo evenings as part of their Duke of Edinburgh Award.
• Watch this space for some In-House Entertainment booked in for next week – all in a Covid-Secure Way.
• We are all looking forward to enjoying some Local Walks and a change of scenery given the latest government update.

HomeCare 

• Thank you to all of the Families, Friends and General Public who have donated for our Boot Fair. We are still taking unwanted items, so please feel free to drop these in when passing. All funds raised during this period will go to Dementia UK.
• We have two New Clients starting this week.

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