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Caring for the elderly during lockdown

Jun 23, 2020 | News

Caring for the elderly during lockdown has been on everyone’s mind. Now people are more worried about what’s happening next. We want Care to remain high on the agenda, so we thought we’d share some of the processes that we think helped us the most. We have achieved local press and outstanding reviews from customers for keeping our all our clients and carers well and happy during the C-19 crisis.

We are beginning to see the shoots of confidence as families ask us to prepare people for greater independence, so things are going back to normal providing a window for reflection for us.

First I should say how blessed we feel because the #in-home practices Seniors Helping Seniors operate made it relatively easy for us to keep everyone well.

Sharing what worked Caring for the elderly during lockdown

We came to the UK to make a difference in Care so we want to share what helps us the most.

Carers: As our name attests, our carers are experienced and close in age to our clients, so it follows (mostly) that our #carergivers live alone or in small family units.

We have a close relationship with each carer so it was easy to gain a reliable status of the whole business when we spoke to every carer in February. We listened to their views and expectations. We implemented our new regimes with 100% compliance.

Schedules: Another key feature of Seniors Helping Seniors is our same person care. It means the very careful matching of client and carer by several key factors.  Many clients only see one or two carers a week anyway, so it was an easy early decision for us to limit the number of carers clients saw for their essential services.

Working from home: Seniors Helping Seniors is run from home. We meet carers annually and on an as-needed basis but there are no premises, no ‘base’ that carers start their day from. In this case, there was no risk of carers infecting each other.

So with hindsight we realise how our three guiding principles set us up very well to adapt to the crisis.

PPE & Caring for the elderly during lockdownWe had our nightmares over PPE like everyone else in care. Never for one moment did we consider waiting for PPE to be given to us, we sourced our own and purchased as much as we could – sometimes we had to replenish every day.

Suppliers who helped us to care  for the elderly during lockdown

Two suppliers shone out for us. We need to thank two businesses for being proactive and very helpful.  How a business’s supplier conducted themselves during the crisis speaks volumes about them. Our insurance company QCIS (#Quality Care Insurance Services Ltd)  helped with PPE early on, and our care system #Axiscare added a feature to the app within days of the crisis breaking. The feature meant our carers declared themselves fit and healthy before each visit. Both suppliers helped us provide essential peace of mind to our clients, customers and carers. Thank you for doing some of the heavy lifting for us. We will not forget it.

Because we were able to maintain capacity and function throughout the lockdown, not only were we able to increase our customer care to include phone calls and full support to families struggling with the long separation but we were also able to support community initiatives and other care companies too.

Dedicated carers caring for the elderly during lockdown

None of this would have been possible without the dedication and skill of our #carers who never ever fail to amaze us. Their work ethic is astonishing. Every day they told us ‘just carry on’ ‘common sense’ but truly, we do not underestimate what that took.

We hope sharing some of these experiences helps. We applaud those working in care who soldiered on through much more challenging processes.

We hope Care remains in the government’s focus for ever more.

The older generation has not been wiped out by #COVID-19 – they are much stronger and more able than most people think.

The #support ‘#elderly’ people in the UK need could not be more different from stereo- typical #elderlycare.

We have always loved to do things differently!

#SeniorsHelpingSeniors #SeniorCare #Homecare #in-homecare #IndependentLiving #LiveBetterLonger #StayWell

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