#CareHome #Visiting Guidance...(a thread) #VisitingCountdown
@JohnCampaign #whereistheguidance #Lockdown2

Family MUST be seen as carers. They provide a level of care that can not be emulated by #care staff. They are the real professionals in their relatives lives.

More needs to be done by so many to understand this. We have had indoor face to face visiting since June and are STILL #COVID free. Even in a tier three county with an r rate much much higher than the first wave. It's exhausting, but is achieved through hard work.

We don't need plastic screens. Heated/sheltered outdoor areas. Intercoms at windows. We need true face to face visiting. It's great to see providers trying. But we can't let prison cells become the accepted standard. We can't let 'supervised visits' become the accepted standard

I'm not discounting or belittling any work or efforts by any managers, but I staunchly believe we are approaching a tipping point, a point of no return if you will, that if we don't act now, we will forever regret it. It'll take years to overcome the effect of these restrictions.

Years us providers, managers, #pointlesspilot scheme makers, won't miss that much, but they are the last year's of thousands and thousands of people. Years in which they will decline and die prematurely. Please,era allow these open conversations to happen.

@DHSCgovuk review your 'guidance' to be more humane, actually, give us what guidance you have as it's a day late already. COVID safe is not plastic screens. It is proper guidance, its effective #RAPIDTESTING, it's reliable #PPE, it's communication between #carehome & relatives

COVID safe is investment in social care, it's money to support safe visiting areas, it's training to promote effective IPC and PPE use. But it is also realising safe means safe from all harm, including isolation, segregation, loneliness.

COVID safe is recognising situations must be looked at in a #personcentred way. No blanket policies either way. No blanket bans, no blanket visiting pods, dementia, sensory impairments renders screens & windows distressing and/or pointless.

COVID safe is many things, not just one thing, COVID safe practices MUST be the least restrictive, always in best interest & holisitic.

COVID safe is not the press release yesterday, and most probably will not be the missing guidance.