Question
Do you feel that the care homes in the Borough have done all they can to limit the spread of Coronavirus and is our statistical base now solid?
Minutes:
Question
Do you feel that the care homes in the Borough have done all they can to limit the spread of Coronavirus and is our statistical base now solid?
Answer
Our care homes have worked tirelessly through this extremely difficult time to help support their residents and I would like to voice my thanks to all of them.
Care homes in Wokingham are usually run by private or voluntary sector service providers. Private care homes are run for profit by private organisations and individuals. Voluntary sector homes are not-for-profit and are run by registered charities, sometimes religious organisations and housing associations.
There are 53 CQC registered care home settings within Wokingham; this is a broad definition and includes many different services i.e. older people care homes, residential and nursing, and learning disability.
Wokingham Borough Council has taken ground-breaking action to help protect its care homes during the Covid-19 crisis.
Last month the Borough Council took the unprecedented decision to go against national Government guidelines by refusing to take patients discharged from hospital into care homes unless it was certain they did not have coronavirus. At the same time, the Council with its partners in the health service, set up a ‘task force’ of specialists to work with care homes to make sure they were ready to cope with patients who had the virus and that their infection control procedures were of the highest standards. The ‘task force’ has now worked with 14 care homes in our Borough to make sure they can start to take hospital discharges again.
As with all care homes across the country, those in Wokingham have been coping with a very difficult situation. People have died of Covid-19 in our homes and our thoughts are with them, their loved ones and the staff who are the people who care for them.
In the first period of the pandemic we became very concerned that the situation in care homes was worsening so we lobbied our MPs and the Local Resilience Forum for increased testing of those discharged from hospital, for those in homes, the staff and for improved supplies of PPE. We increased our support to local care homes providing emergency supplies of PPE and forming a ‘task force’, which I mentioned before.
Despite this lobbying Government guidelines continued to allow the discharge of patients which is why we took the decision to stop discharges unless the patient has tested negative, is without symptoms or our ‘task forc’e was certain the care home could cope with positive cases.
We now, as I said, have visited 14 care homes and they are at a place where we can take people safely into these homes. I would like to personally thank all the care home staff and management for the immense effort they have put in to keep people supported in the most difficult of situations.
We have also supported care homes in other ways:
· We have offered an improved funding deal for care homes who we contract to with the ability to get additional temporary funding;
· We have offered help with the supply of PPE. 231,000 pieces of PPE have been supplied to our care homes;
· We have offered regular advice and guidance. We have been ringing the management and staff regularly to provide support. Over 300 calls to registered care homes;
· We have tested staff with symptoms, more than 250 so far plus others who have self-referred themselves; and
· The offer of access to staff in an emergency and infection control hotline has been established.