Excellence in Care For The Elderly

We advise that the Government has brought in some new guidelines regarding visitors to care homes and these changes will take effect from the 15 November 2021.

The new guidelines are as follows:

• Each care home resident should be limited to three nominated visitors who can visit regularly. This will be in addition to all residents being able to nominate an essential care giver who can visit for companionship or for care needs. In line with the system that was in place earlier in the pandemic, the nominated visitors should remain the same, barring an exceptional change in circumstances.
• Visits at the end of life should always be supported.

When going out of the care home residents should:

• avoid visiting people they do not usually spend time with regularly.
• avoid visits out that involve mixing with a large number of people indoors.
• have had a COVID-19 booster before taking part in a visit out of the care home if eligible, unless exempt.
• ask those they are visiting to undertake regular LFD testing, and receive a negative LFD on the day of the visit.
• ask those they are visiting to have had their COVID-19 vaccinations including booster if eligible.
• Residents will still be asked to self-isolate following an emergency stay in hospital or following a visit out of the care home that is determined to be high-risk following an individual risk assessment.
• For other visits out of the care home, to ensure that care home residents can continue to go out of the care home to visit loved ones or spend time in the local community, we will ask residents who have had two doses of the vaccine, or who are exempt, to take LFD tests every other day for 14 days when they return from spending time out of the care home.
• For those residents who have not had two doses of the vaccine and who are not exempt, we will ask them to isolate for 14 days following a visit out in order to mitigate the risk that they endanger their fellow residents by bringing the new variant into the care home.

We hope that you will agree that the new arrangements provide appropriate additional protection to our care home residents while ensuring they can continue to have meaningful contact with loved ones and take part in activities they enjoy in the context of a highly transmissible variant.

Thank you for all your support in ensuring our residents can safely spend time with their loved ones this Christmas.