How to prepare your care home for winter
Wow, this year has really snuck up on us, hasn’t it? In the blink of an eye, winter is upon us. With COVID-19 continuing to consume most of our attention, it’s easy to forget about other issues; unfortunately, in the care sector, we can’t afford to be complacent when approaching the colder months, and, if you haven’t done so already, it’s essential to prepare your care home for the weather to come. This year, it’s going to be especially important to best prepare your care home, staff and residents for winter, as it still remains uncertain as to where we’ll be with the pandemic once the temperature well and truly drops. Luckily, our consultants are on hand to share their best advice for enabling your care home to thrive this winter.
Tip 1: Have you got enough salt?
We’re not talking about salt for resident’s fish and chips here! As you’re probably aware, salt is a health and safety requirement as when the ground freezes over, or if it snows, it’s going to be pivotal to ensuring resident, staff and visitor safety. If you haven’t checked on your care home’s supply of salt recently, it’s a good idea to go and do an inspection now. If yours is looking a bit thin on the ground, place an order immediately.
Tip 2: Update your contingency plan
This is the most crucial factor, as a comprehensive and well-thought-out contingency plan will be critical in ensuring your care home is well prepared for winter. Your contingency plan should cover a vast array of different measures, including:
- A plan for emergencies:
- What will you do if you’re snowed in and deliveries are delayed?
- What will you do if staff are unable to make it in?
- Is there someone in the community who could help in an absolute crisis? You might be able to think of a key figure in your community who would be able to deliver emergency food to prevent staff from leaving. Start liaising with them now to find out if they’d be willing to help. Additionally, you might want to talk to your local choir to organise morale-raising activities, such as socially-distanced carol singers at Christmas.
- Blankets and portable heaters: When the temperature drops, your residents are going to want access to blankets, so start building up your reserves now.
- Food and snacks: Have you got enough food to see you through a delivery delay?
- Torches: It’s not uncommon to lose power in winter; make sure you have enough torches to see you through a power cut.
- Staffing: What contingencies have you got in place to deal with staff shortages?
- Broadband and internet: If you know your internet is prone to dropping out for prolonged periods of time, it’s a good idea to start looking at changing your provider or router now. It seems likely that visiting restrictions are going to continue over winter, and your residents are going to want to talk to their families.
Tip 3: Review your contingency plan with a committee and communicate with your staff
There’s no good having a watertight contingency plan if no one knows about it. Make sure you review your contingency proposal with a committee that involves management and some staff to guarantee that you’ve covered every base and that each level of employee thinks the plan is realistic. From there, you’ll want to make sure that every single person who works in the care home is aware of that contingency plan.
Tip 4: Have you checked your boiler and electrical system?
Boiler servicing is such a fundamental preparation for winter but, unfortunately, it’s one that is often forgotten. Research by Boiler Guide found that, “with a chunky 15.56, most repairs and breakdowns happen in January of each year”. Ultimately, this is also going to mean that, should your boiler break down in these busy months, you’re going to be waiting even longer to get it up and running again. Go and check on it now and if you find anything out of place, at least you’ve got time to act.
Tip 5: Recommend to your staff that they get the flu jab
The NHS offers the flu jab free for people most vulnerable to the adverse effects of contracting the flu. Given that all over 65s qualify, it is likely that all your residents will be having the jab.
It’s important to remember that social-care staff also qualify, which means that your staff will also be able to have the vaccine. Obviously, it’s not appropriate to force your staff to be inoculated, but it’s a good idea to remind staff that it’s time to get the jab – should they wish to have it – and communicate to them that they will get it free through their local GP or clinic.
Importantly, with the coronavirus crisis ongoing, the NHS has stressed that it’s more vital than ever for the vulnerable to be protected against the flu.
Tip 6: Look at your winter staffing levels
Staffing your care home can be difficult at the best of times but, during winter, the task becomes even more challenging. The first thing you might want to look at are your typical winter sickness levels; have a look at what percentage of staff sickness you often operate at and make a plan for seeing you through. One solution is to rely on agency staff, but avoid agency nurses if at all possible, predominantly because they come at a much higher price tag and this will hurt your commercials. The next solution is to start hiring more staff to see you through these months now, if you can afford it – remember, this will be more cost-effective in the long run than having to rely on agency staff. There’s also the possibility of getting free staff for six-months through the government’s ‘Kickstarter Scheme’, although you’ll want to factor in the likelihood that they will enter at an apprentice level. This means you’ll have to oversee training them up before they can really start undertaking tasks independently.
When looking at your winter staffing levels, the second factor you’ll want to start preparing for is the holiday period. Let’s face it, very few of your staff are going to want to work over Christmas, and lots of them are probably wanting to take a substantial amount of time off – realistically, this is not going to be possible. Start preparing for the time off that staff want now to ensure that you’re properly prepared for winter and, again, to avoid expensive agency staff. Remember to always be honest and realistic with your staff about when they’ll be working, and try to keep the process of deciding who is on duty when as fair as possible.
Tip 7: Do a general health review of all your residents
Ahead of the colder months, it’s a good idea to stop and check the health of your residents. This will help you to identify who is particularly at risk and what steps you can start to put in place now to prepare your staff.
Tip 8: Get your staff trained up
This is especially important if your care home is residential but has no nurses on site. Over winter, it can be particularly hard to get medical staff out to your care home, and this might result in a resident having to go to hospital for just a minor issue. It should go without saying, but given the increased risk of contracting COVID-19 in hospital, you’re going to want to avoid it if at all possible.
Obviously, there are going to be times when hospital is unavoidable, such as if a resident has a major illness, but if you’re looking at problems like a minor wound, hospital is best averted. Now is a great time to start sending your staff on first-aid courses to get them trained to be able to offer minor medical assistance, such as dressing a wound. This way you’ll avoid having to call out a nurse and/or sending a resident to hospital.
Practice 9: What activities will you be able to offer your residents?
With restrictions looking likely to continue for the foreseeable future, you don’t want to be stuck in the middle of winter with no activities planned for your residents. A recent academic article by Simard and Voicer, published in JAMDA, looked into the loneliness in long-term care facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic, finding that the feelings of isolation that are already prevalent in care institutions have only been exaggerated by the coronavirus-restrictions.
Although there is no clear-cut way to prevent your resident from feeling lonely, getting them involved in activities is one way to help minimise the risk of them experiencing these feelings. If your care home has enough devices, organising activities with Zoom is a great way to do this and you could get an outside instructor to provide them with a lesson in their field. Remember not to broadcast anything unless everyone consents, because the activity is taking place inside a private home.
Tip 10: How will you manage visits over Christmas
You know the drill: your care home will experience a steady number of visitations and then suddenly it gets to the period between the 26th-30th of December and everyone wants to visit their loved one. Obviously, it’s understandable to want to visit a family member around Christmas, but it’s not going to be possible for everyone to come at once, indeed at time of writing to have multiple households mixing on the sort of scale we’re talking about would be a fineable offence.
Start communicating with residents' loved ones now and letting them know that only one person from each family that will be able to visit this year (and obviously this is going to be dependent upon local lockdown rules, which will keep changing). Allowing visitors into your care home is going to be great for improving the mental health of your residents, but you need to have a plan to manage it; one way might be through offering an online booking system. Another thing to consider is how you’re going to staff these visitations, as with more visitors coming, you’re going to need staff to clean after each visitor and to help ensure that residents get to their scheduled meeting with their loved one.
Tip 11: How are you going to keep residents active?
We all know that keeping as physically active as possible is going to pay dividends to our overall health. The current restrictions mean that residents are spending more time in their rooms than ever before. Putting together an activity plan for your residents to ensure that they’re all moving about enough is a really good idea.
Tip 12: Have you got enough PPE?
Again, protective equipment has always been commonplace within care facilities, but in the current context, it’s more important than ever to ensure that you have a sufficient level of PPE. Winter only makes this more pivotal, because in all likelihood, you may experience a delivery delay if the road conditions become poor. Start taking stock of your itinerary now and order anything that you might be running low of.
Tip 13: Develop a plan on infection control and prevention other winter bugs
With coronavirus continuing to dominate headlines, its easy to forget about the other types of illnesses that are commonplace throughout the colder months. Your care home should be well equipped to deal with outbreaks of other viruses, such as the Norovirus. Norovirus should be suspected in any resident who develops diarrhoea with or without vomiting and without any other causes; crucially, if two or more people display these symptoms within two days of each other, you should treat this as a potential outbreak.
Having a clear plan in place detailing how you will deal with such a situation is crucial in minimising your risks. Health Protection Scotland, have put together a useful document for dealing with such an outbreak, it cites a clear delegation of roles and responsibilities amongst staff and a checklist of things that need to be done during an outbreak as pivotal ensuring your care home is prepared.
More generally, your care home should have a clear plan in place regarding infection prevention and control. This will consider variables, such as, visitors, social distancing, shielding, PPE and testing, and will set out how you plan to manage these different factors.