Recent Government Announcement Regarding Care Home Visiting

Updated 25th February 2021

Following the recent Government announcements regarding a return to allowing indoor visiting in care homes, and potentially the holding of hands, we are reviewing our guidance and planning for and looking forward to a safe, phased and cautious return to indoor visiting within our Care Homes. In the meantime, we are pleased that all of our homes have a dedicated area for visiting, either, indoor or window visiting, available for those who can be assisted to this area. This will continue to be offered for those who choose this option using the current systems that are in place.

We are aware that the current indoor visiting areas and window visiting may not be a solution for those residents whose mobility means that they are unable to use them. Following the various Government announcements regarding a return to allowing indoor visiting in care homes, there is much work to do including ensuring that the ‘designated visitor’ is agreed by the resident, where possible, or the relevant next of kin or Power of Attorney, if relevant.

Our current thinking is that we will start visiting from the 8th March in a phased approach, prioritising those who have not able to have any visiting from loved ones due to a lack of mobility, and therefore haven’t seen loved ones at all for some time. Please bear with us as we work through the detail and continue to keep in contact via video or telephone calls instead for now. At this time, indoor bedroom visits at present are only permitted in exceptional circumstances for those nearing the end of their lives and we ask that visitors participate in Lateral Flow Testing as part of end of life visiting.

All families are now aware of our visitor booking system. This enables the teams to manage visiting as effectively as possible, and also allows you, as the visitor, an easy to use system to plan your visits. This will enable you to book visits directly with the home, and enable us to manage the volume of visitors and track and trace in a more co-ordinated way.

Please note, the Home Manager may postpone visits at any time without notice, should they be advised to do so for the safety of all as instructed by government or local public health authorities. This may result in visits being cancelled at short notice, but rest assured we will do our best to give as much notice as possible. 

Further Government guidance will be published before the launch of the single, named visitor scheme on 8th March, so we will need to receive this guidance and decide how it can also be incorporated into our practice.

Please be assured that we are doing our very best to keep the infection out of our Care Homes and will continue to do this as our priority.

Steve Gibson (Head of Care & Development)