Hello families and friends of Rosemary Heights Seniors Village

We hope you are all staying safe and healthy!

We are happy to report there continues to be no signs or symptoms of COVID-19 in any of our residents or staff at Rosemary Heights Seniors Village, and for that we are very grateful. Should the status of Rosemary Heights Seniors Village change in any respect, please know that we will immediately contact families.

COVID Vaccinations Update

On Tuesday, February 24^th we successfully held our second COVID-19 vaccine clinic for the 2^nd dose of the Pfizer vaccine.  Please note this does not change any of the safety protocols in place by the MHO or Fraser Health authority.

Protocols

Aside from the single visitor policy, we are following the direction of our public health officials and have full infection prevention and control precautions in place. Staff continue to monitor residents closely and are ensuring the following protocols are being adhered to:

• Restricting ALL visitors from the premises/only those who have been deemed essential may enter the building at this time
• Ensuring no staff member is working in multiple facilities
• Staff are screened for their temperature upon entrance to the building, and midway through their shift
• Social distancing is occurring among residents in each facility, including during mealtimes
• Ensuring ongoing, environmental cleaning and increased frequency of high touch surface cleaning in order to break the chain of infection
• Staff and residents are committed to regular/proper hand hygiene to break the chain of infection, and wash their hands with soap and water and apply hand sanitizer frequently.

We will continue to act upon their latest advice, and will adapt our operations as necessary and recommended. 

Tax receipts

Tax receipts will be issued and mailed out to the responsible person by end of February 2021. 

Introduction

We are pleased to introduce Melissa Toth as our new Community Relations Manager at Rosemary Heights Seniors Village. She comes to us from out sister property, Dufferin Care Centre and has been with the company about 2.5 years. We are excited to have her for an extended period of time 5 days per week. Melissa’s favorite thing about her job is helping seniors find their forever home, creatively finding ways to go above and beyond, and event planning/hosting events.

Melissa is originally from Kelowna where she grew up. She did live in China for a short time in her early 20’s teaching English. Melissa has a background in hospitality and finance. She has a sweet little boy Schnauzer named “Spade”. He is actually the cousin of Maggie’s (GM) little dog. What a small world!! On weekends you can find Melissa baking, going on walks/hiking, dancing (although that has stopped currently with the pandemic), or exploring the Vancouver area. Melissa loves to spend the day walking around exploring new areas of Vancouver, going for breakfast and in the afternoon finding a delicious bakery! Please come say hi to her and share your favorite breakfast or bakery shop! I am sure she would love to know about some more hidden gems!  You can reach Melissa at 604-209-1486, or email mtoth@retirementconcepts.com

Visitor

Per the BC Centre for Disease Control, and Provincial Health Order directive, there are currently two categories of visitors for Retirement Communities, Essential Visitors & Designated Visitors for Social Visits.

Essential Visitors provide visits for compassionate care and/or are paramount to the patient/client’s physical care and mental well-being. The Health Authority or Facility staff will determine if a visit is essential. Whereas, Designated Visitors are for social occasion visits, and under these guidelines, each resident is permitted to have ONE designated visitor with bookings made in advance.

• Each tenant and/or resident will be allotted one assigned family member for their visitations.
• All visitors, staff, tenants and residents will be required to wear a medical grade mask while in Rosemary Heights Seniors Village. The mask MUST be worn at all times and for the duration of your visit to the building, as well as the entirety of the 30 minute visits.
• Our priority is protecting the residents/tenants. Family/social visits are limited to a maximum of one designated family member or friend at a time (we are not permitted to have alternative visitors per the Provincial Health Officers).
• To request  visit times/dates email this address  rhsv-familyvisits@retirementconcepts.com  for visitation.  Please include your name, contact telephone number, and name of resident your email.  Allow 48-72 hours for a return call/reply. Keep in mind that we will initially hold monthly visits only in order to accommodate everyone.
• Please arrive a maximum of 5 minutes before visitation appointment to complete pre-screening requirements
• Visits will be 30 minutes and will not be able to accommodate extended times. Please adhere to social distancing and sanitization protocol at all times.
• Please do not bring items for your loved one to your visit, this would include food or drinks
• AND PLEASE NOTE: Should the community have any type of outbreak, visits will cease immediately

Recreation:

February is Therapeutic Recreation Month! This month we recognize the importance and diversity of TR and will be celebrating the amazing team we have here at RHSV. Therapeutic Recreation (often referred to as TR or Rec Therapy) is a profession, which recognizes leisure, recreation and play as integral components of quality of life.  We hope that you enjoyed learning about TR and meeting & learning about this wonderful team. This week we are spotlighting the one & only: Jaylene Smillie, Manager of Therapeutic Recreation & volunteers.

Jaylene joined RHSV when the doors first opened in 2008 and we had no idea how valuable she would become to us & all the residents. We asked her what do you love about TR? Jaylene loves that every day as a recreation therapist is different and loves that every day TR has a positive impact on the lives of the seniors.  Jaylene knew an early age that she wanted to work in the health care industry with seniors but did not know about TR until she met some amazing ladies through volunteering and these ladies became her mentors and she’s still in touch with these amazing ladies 25 years later(25 years?-hmmmm will need to check her IDJ).  A fun fact about Jaylene, she has been a member of a car club since before she could even drive.  Vroom Vroom!

This week, every day we have had a fun themed day and have been throughout the month. This week we celebrated Tall or Small Day (tallest man in recorded history was over 8ft tall), hula in the coola day (we laughed at winter and wore toques & mitts with a grass skirt), Wednesday was PINK shirt & lift each other up day-this year’s anti-bullying theme, Thursday is crazy tie day and Friday is tacky tourist day, just to name a few!  We are so very lucky to have such an amazing group of ladies to bring the fun to our world inside RHSV. THANK YOU!!

We will continue to offer scheduled video calls for those families who live out of town or are unable to come in for any reason. Please connect with Jaylene Smillie in our recreation department by emailing jsmillie@retirementconcepts.com or by calling 778-545-5000 ext. 1007

Dining

What’s cooking?  Looking forward to this week’s daily home-made soups, which are so nice to warm up with the cold winter weather we are having:

Butternut Squash, Minestrone, Tomato Basil, Carrot ginger, Cream of Broccoli, Sausage & vegetable, Golden lentil, Loaded baked potatoes, Tortellini Chicken Noodle, &Cream of Celery Soup to name a few.

A wonderful way to enjoy lunch with a daily soup special, thank you to the talented culinary team for providing us all with warm comfort foods.  Today we will be serving birthday cake to celebrate all of our February Birthday Celebrants.

Deliveries

**Delivery hours are between 9am- 3pm, Mon-Sat and closed Sundays**

All deliveries will be received at the lobby entrance vestibule. This includes medication deliveries from pharmacies, other gifts and mail. All items will be sanitized and delivered directly to the residents’ suite.

1. Please use plastic bags, not reusable bags;
2. Please label all bags with the resident’s name and suite number;
3. In consideration of staff-to-resident priorities as well as infection control, please try to limit drop offs to essential items; and.
4. If possible, please sanitize the items before dropping off. We will re-sanitize as well to be safe.

Please do not drop off items after hours, we do not have staff to be able to accept it and may be left outside until the designated time listed, if you do, you will be taking your chances & we will not be responsible for anything that is left after hours.

A big thank you to everyone for working so hard to keep Rosemary Heights safe and healthy, as well as for the kindness, understanding and support that has been shown.

Take care, and let’s take care of each other.

Stay Safe, stay calm, & stay kind.

– Your team at Rosemary Heights Seniors Village (RHSV)