Covid Vaccine

After a rollercoaster few months for all residing or working in social care, it hardly seems possible that a vaccine, and thus a pathway back to the life we love to live, is on the horizon.

At Apple House care homes we want to assure you that we are working hard behind the scenes to keep safe the people entrusted to our care and our teams. PPE continues to be worn at all times in accordance with PHE best practice guidelines and we pay our team their full wages if they are called upon to isolate. We have collectively worked to reduce or eradicate staff movement between home ‘bubbles’ and are immensely proud of our teams for going above and beyond their normal working hours and duties to place a protective ring around each of our services, to keep others and themselves safe from Covid.

The vaccine roll-out is a monumental exercise, the likes of which has not been known in modern times. As yet we don’t know when our staff, or the people living in our services, will be called for their jab. But, we want to assure you that the work needed to ready us for our ‘turn’ is well underway. I applaud our local authority partners for their daily communication and the coordination looming to get the most vulnerable vaccinated, and ultimately you and us too. They never fail to keep us informed and to offer support to our sector.

Romaine, Director of Operations, attends weekly virtual meetings with the Clinical Commissioning Group and others in the varying care sectors, and yesterday, with Public Health England. We aspire to pioneer. We advocate for the people we support and keep updated with evolving guidance. We put forward ideas and action some of the ideas of others. Covid may have curbed life as we know it but our ambition is to lessen the impact on the people we support. To this aim we are managing to facilitate visiting, both at our homes in our new visiting pods, and at the homes of loved ones or community where possible and risk assessed.

Finally, thank you to every one of you who supports us – families, friends and professional colleagues, it’s really appreciated.

— Jane Montrose, Managing Director, Apple House care homes.