Highs and lows of working in a care home during the coronavirus pandemic
A care home boss has spoken of her hopes for the future after the most challenging year of her career battling coronavirus.
Vicky Harvey has been the manager of The Firs Care Home in Dudley for 13 years.
The home has 55 residents, some are living with Alzheimer’s and dementia, but they still maintain an active social life, with regular trips paid for through fundraising.
But this year after Covid-19 brought the world to a halt in March, all plans had to be scrapped, and the worst-case scenario happened when staff and residents became infected.
A total of eight residents and three staff tested positive, including Vicky herself, but luckily the virus was out of the home within a month.
“Coronavirus has had a big impact on us. As well as having restrictions, they’ve not been able to see their loved ones and not been able to join in activities outside,” she said.
“It’s been a big strain on the home, we’ve had to change a lot of things to help and try to bring morale up for the residents and staff.
“It has been difficult. We did have Covid in the home in March, it was brought in we believe through a hospital admission on March 31 but by the end of April we were Covid-free and we haven’t had it in the home since.
“It has affected some staff including myself. In the early days it was very, very heard, emotionally draining.
"We’ve tried to keep staff morale up as best we can and there’s team bonding and team meetings and we try to support each other really. The staff have been really, really good.
“When we had cases in the home in March it was very new, it was all over the news and I’m proud that all the staff stood by the residents.
“We had eight residents and three staff including myself with the virus. It could’ve been a lot worse, we had to work really hard with constant cleaning and sanitising.
“To get people with dementia to stay in their rooms is impossible. I’ve been at the home for 13 years and it has been the hardest challenge of my career.”
After the virus was under control, day-to-day life still couldn’t go back to normal so the home brought in garden visits and created a visiting booth to keep residents safe.
“From March to May we couldn’t have any visitors.
"Come June it was too much to bear, so I decided to do garden visits and we were the first home in the area to do this. Within weeks it was clear, the impact it had. It really meant a lot to the residents,” Vicky added.
“As time’s gone on we’ve now had a visiting booth made in the home and we can have visitors through a booking system.
"They can see their loved ones through a screen with microphones. We’ve been doing Skype and phone calls throughout the summer too.”
Usually a highlight of the calendar is a trip to the seaside, which has had to be cancelled, but the staff have worked hard to keep up morale through regular events indoors.
And the Covid jab roll-out has brought fresh hope to the home in Wodehouse Lane, Gospel End.
“With the new vaccine coming in we’re hoping to start getting back to normal,” added Vicky.
