Coronavirus Outbreak Update

Tuesday, 26 May 2020

Steps taken by Silverline Care amid the outbreak

At each of our 12 homes throughout Scotland and England, Silverline Care seeks to provide high quality nursing and residential facilities and services to all our residents and to support them and their families, particularly at difficult times. Our services are clinically led by experienced local managers and we support the care homes with a strong regional and corporate team. We consider ourselves to be an important part of each of the local communities we serve.

During the Coronavirus outbreak, Silverline Care has set itself the following objectives:

• To keep residents, staff and their families as safe as possible during the current outbreak.
• To ensure that all managers and staff within Silverline Care are appropriately supported to cope with the situation (both in terms of guidance and training as well as equipment and supplies)
• To communicate transparently with our stakeholders including families and friends to provide comfort as to our approach.

Our plans will be kept under regular review and updated as advised by the Public health authorities.

Visitation – From 13th March, based on the precautionary principle, we stopped taking new admissions to our care homes to minimise the risk of spreading the virus. We also stopped non-essential visits to the homes by family and friends. This decision was supported by the government in its subsequent guidance which was published shortly after.

We appreciate how difficult this has been for our residents, their families and loved ones and we would like to thank you all for your continued support and understanding.

In order to help our residents stay connected to their loved ones during the restrictions on visiting, Silverline Care equipped each of our homes with additional mobile phones, we have encouraged and facilitated video calling and invited messages to be sent via our website or directly to the homes which have been shared appropriately.
We have also provided regular updates on our website and social media pages which we hope you have enjoyed seeing.

Compassionate visiting
In line with information available to us from local health care officials, our doors remain closed to all non-essential visits. However, visiting may be possible for close family members of a resident who is critically ill or at the end of their life. This would be arranged on an appointment basis and on the stipulation that before being granted access to any of our homes, individuals confirm that they and members of their household do not have symptoms of coronavirus, like a fever or cough or loss of taste or smell. There may also be a requirement for PPE to be worn by all visitors.

We hope to be able to increase visitation soon and we are working with our teams in each of our homes to create protocols and clear guidelines as to how this will be implemented to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our residents and staff. We will provide updates on this when it is appropriate to do so.

P P E – Our finance team, supported by the directors, has spent significant time and resource ensuring that each home has had sufficient quantities and quality of PPE and clear guidance on how to use it. Silverline Care currently holds a good supply of PPE to ensure our staff can protect themselves and our residents, whether they are symptomatic or not. We will continue to maintain our stock and to support sessional use for as long as required.

Silverline Care continues to enlist the help of Respiratory Expert Jon Miles who has been providing the latest information and advice to the Silverline Care group and supporting our care home managers directly on matters relating to their home.

Testing – All Silverline Care homes are supporting staff and residents to access testing for Covid-19. We will continue to welcome the opportunity to carry out testing and re-testing either on a home level or by encouraging our staff to self-refer for as long as considered necessary.

Admissions – As we support our local health partners and the people who need care at this time, as of the end of May we are now admitting new residents, where possible and appropriate.

Please note this will only be done in line with the latest guidelines and an assessment of the potential resident and of the home, including the individual’s completion of two negative Covid-19 tests.

For more information, or to enquire about an admission please fill out the form on the contact us page or phone the relevant care home directly.

We hope that you find this update useful and that it reassures you that safeguarding the health and wellbeing of our residents and staff remains our top priority.

Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch.