Dear all Family Members and Friends of Bellavista.

                     Thank you for all your support the past three months, it has been a difficult time for everyone. We would like to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your co-operation and support during our period of lock down, we understand how difficult it will have been to not to see and spend time with your loved ones. We are proud to say that we are surrounded by a professional, skilled, dedicated, and compassionate team who are willing to put the care of our residents first.  We have been truly humbled by seeing everyone work together using their expertise, and positive attitude to do the right thing.  Our activities team have been working endlessly to ensure all family members have still maintained contact with their loved ones, either via video call or chat, if you have been unable to take part in a phone call or skype call please call us and we will be happy to arrange. We are so proud of all our staff at Bellavista who have gone above and beyond the past few months in support of this pandemic and would like to give them massive thanks and show our appreciation for their commitment.  As you are aware we did have confirmed cases of Covid 19 in our Cardiff home, but we are delighted that the procedures we have put in place, such as an isolation unit, strict infection control procedures and quality care have been effective in limiting the spread of infection ,keeping our residents and staff members safe: however we sadly have lost few residents over the last few months to the pandemic and other natural causes and they are in our thoughts and prayers, we are confident the situation with in the home is stable now and we can look at moving forward in the near future.  We have started to have enquiries into visiting at the home. Please be advised our visiting restrictions still remain the same at present, we will look at slowly easing restrictions when we are advised it is safe to do so by the Public Health Wales,  local authority and Health Board. We hope to have an update on this in the coming weeks. 

Infection control & Personal Protective Equipment:

We can assure you that we continue to take the appropriate precautionary measures to limit the risk of the coronavirus spreading in our care home, and we act swiftly each day, ensuring that we are up to date with the latest guidance and advice published by the Government and Public Health Wales.

Infection control is still very much at the heart of minute by minute work in the homes.  Before the pandemic, we already had strict control audits for managing outbreaks of any respiratory virus or infection, and as more has become known about the Covid-19 virus we have followed new recommendations from Government and Public Health Wales, immediately communicating with our staff about appropriate PPE, hand washing and sanitisation of facilities .We are also keeping on top of our Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) supplies with daily stock checks and orders to ensure that our staff team have access to everything they need to work and care for our residents in a safe way

We are overwhelmed by all the wonderful gifts and letters of support from family members, community groups and schools. We thank you for your continued support and cooperation as we move safely through this pandemic.

Please keep in mind that until advised by home manager, current visitor restrictions will remain in place.

Maintaining a Safe Environment:

We continue to implement a number of measures to keep a safe environment for our staff and residents. As you will know, we were one of the first care groups to restrict non-essential visits to our care homes and put this in place prior to the Government advising it. In addition to maintaining this restriction, some other key initiatives include:

• We have requested all residents for testing, and all staff members have been tested for COVID-19, with excellent ratio of negative results.
• Daily temperature checks for all staff and residents
• Thorough infection control procedures in place, including use of PPE and handwashing
• Infection control training in place for all staff plus regular audits of procedures and handwashing
• Heightened cleaning procedures
• We are trying our best with a Social distancing policy now in place for our home
• 14-day precautionary isolation for all new residents who come to live in the care home and implementation of isolation procedures for any resident who shows any potential COVID-19 symptoms
• Staff members are monitored daily and are following NHS guidelines, being careful to not attend work and to follow isolation guidelines if they, or anyone in their household displays COVID-19 symptoms
• Staff members are not travelling to and from work in uniform, but are changing into uniform prior to starting their shift in the home, and then changing back into outdoor clothing before leaving.
• Staff members are limiting what they are bringing into the care home and all belongings are being kept in a designated area away from residents

Once again Thank you for all your support and we look forward to hopefully being able to see you all at some point in the near future. If you have any questions or queries please do get in touch on info@bellavistanursinghome.com

Stay Safe 

10/06/2020