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May 29th, 2020

 

Hello Everyone,

 

We continue to appreciate all that you and your loved ones are doing to heed the precautions put in place to alleviate risk of exposure to COVID-19.

 

I am relieved to tell you that there are no cases of reported outbreak nor signs nor symptoms of COVID-19 in any of our residents or staff here at Summerland Seniors’ Village.

 

As the Province begins the transition that will see some of the rules relaxed, a gentle reminder that we continue to following the direction of our provincial Health Officer, Bonnie Henry, and access to our building has not changed.

 

The Province is in discussion with how to best address the need to keep everyone safe while attempting to find ways and opportunities for your loved ones to be active and engaged in some measure of activities and socialization.  In conversations with some of you folks over these last few weeks, there has been a growing concern for the mental health of the residents that have been restricted from visits with their families.  We are attempting to begin to have small groups of social activities over in LTC as well as AL.  We have had someone that works at SSV offer to come in and play some live music for the residents without creating an issue with social distancing.  This will primarily be geared towards LTC, as AL is having hallway happy hour where there is some music and socialization.

 

Communication

 

We understand that communicating during this time with your loved ones is very important.  We would like to encourage face time visits, phone calls and for LTC recreation door visits.  We will be reducing visits to ensure that programming is still being completed with your loved ones, as this is also essential.

We are now requesting that families schedule only one visit per week (this is per resident).  You as a family may need to decide who will be the one visiting that week either by face time or recreation door (for LTC).  We will be asking you to choose between a Recreation door visit, and a tablet visit, but again are requesting that this be reduced to one visit per week so that the recreation staff can have a healthier balance between providing activities and blending visits.  We are attempting to split this about half and half if possible.

 

We are really having a hard time keeping families off of the property.  We have already had to ask several folks to please leave the property this week alone.  I welcome you to review information from the Medical health officer as it relates to access to long term care homes at this time.  For those of you who have respected the request since the onset, we can’t tell you how grateful we are for your participation and commitment to helping us keep SSV COVID free.

 

We may look at ways we can monitor the property more closely moving forward, and are exploring some ideas about how to do that from others.  It is truly unfortunate that we may need to consider some type of monitoring system, but we remain committed in our diligence to keep our building and your loved ones COVID free.

 

 

 

Recreation

 

The recreation team will be working closely with myself and some of the other leadership team to develop some programs that will work with small group participation.  We will review how we will remain social distancing while these activities occur.  We will monitor the success of the programs and review participation with the team.

 

Meals

 

The Assisted Living Dining room will re-open as soon as we receive confirmation from Interior Health that our dining rooms may re-open with social distancing in mind.  We have already staged the dining room and taped off the areas to ensure social distancing is in play.  The Bistro will remain closed until further notice.  We may need to look at 3 services instead of 2 to accommodate, so there may be some changes in meal times for your loved ones.

 

General store

 

The general store remains open, however; we are not permitting more than one person in the store at a time.  The store remains well stocked and available for some treats and little necessities.

 

Deliveries

 

We remain asking that any deliveries come through the front door for sanitization.  This is for both AL and LTC.  For LTC, we are asking that only small items in single wrapping and single serving sizes are brought to LTC that may also be sanitized by wiping down.  We are again reminding folks to please not leave things on the carts after 4:30 p.m.

 

I do understand that you are all really feeling this separation from your loved ones.  The team here at SSV appreciates your patience and understanding while we hopefully safely transition to this new phase.

 

Stay Safe everyone,

Sincerely,

Christy Baker

General Manager