Issue 11 10.06.20
CALLING ALL SUPPLIERS Do you need a website – and quick – to sell your products and services online?
Contact us today: sally@scriptmedia.co.uk
or 07939 324 781
The weekly online newsletter for the care sector
Second spike fears due to slow results A WORRIED care home owner fears a failure to ensure that coronavirus test results are available quickly enough will lead to a deadly second surge of the disease. According to Glyn Williams, the owner of the Gwyddfor Care Home in Bodedern on Anglesey, critical time is being lost because test results are still taking too long to turnround. Experts say it is vital for test and trace procedures to be completed within 48 hours otherwise it is ineffective but Mr Williams revealed it took nearly 70 hours for the result of a test on a member of his staff to come through last week. Anglesey was the only county in North Wales to be selected to trial the Welsh Government’s Test, Trace and Protect strategy, which involves testing people for coronavirus and then tracing the people they have been in contact with in a bid to stem the spread of the disease. Ministers believe effective use of the strategy will be critical to protecting the lives of thousands of people across Wales in the months ahead. The fact that weekly testing for care home staff was now available was welcome news but in reality care providers say the test and trace system cannot possibly work because
all too often tests results were not being returned within 24 or even 48 hours, leaving no time for tracers to do their job. As it turned out, Glyn revealed the result of the test on his member of staff was thankfully negative. “If it had been a positive there is no way that it would have been possible to break the chain of infection. To do that you need to trace every contact within 48 hours,” said Glynn, a former RAF engineer who runs the home with his wife Mary. “The scientists tell us it takes 48 hours from when a person becomes symptomatic for that person’s contacts to pass the infection on to somebody else. “If we can get the test turned around within 24 hours that leaves the contact tracers with another 24 hours to contact everyone who is a potential contact of that person and get their agreement to isolate. One thing that doesn’t help in North Wales is that the majority of tests from the region have to be couriered to Cardiff. “My experience in Wales is that not very many of them are turned around within 24 hours. I referred a member of my staff on Tuesday afternoon at 3.30pm for a test. It finally came through at 11.02am on Friday – that’s nearly 70 hours.”
Volunteers celebrated by charity
Royal Star & Garter in High Wycombe has thrown a special D-Day party for one of its residents who took part in the Normandy landings 76 years ago. Staff at the care home organised the tea party for George Avery on June 6 – the anniversary of the D-Day landings. The 98-year-old, who is known to friends and family as Bunny, was a Sapper in the Royal Engineers and built Bailey bridges throughout Europe to help support the Allied advance into Nazi-occupied Europe. He was part of the second wave of British troops to land on Sword Beach on June 6 1944. Bunny was dropped close to the shoreline by his landing craft, and as he made his way to the beach he “just kept running”. He remembers seeing bodies strewn on the sand and added: “I thought, ‘Keep your head down boy!’” In 2016 he was awarded France’s highest military honour – the Legion d’Honneur – as thanks from the French government for his role in its liberation.
BRUNELCARE celebrated Volunteers’ Week by creating a video full of thank you messages from residents, tenants, guests and CEO Oona Goldsworthy. They also posted messages, infographics and images of thanks daily on various social media channels too. So far this year, and before restrictions were introduced by the Government, the charity which has supported older people in the South West for nearly 80 years, managed to organise 16 coffee mornings, eight gardening sessions and six day trips for some of the tenants and residents. Emma Gwynne, volunteering development manager at Brunelcare, said: “Volunteers’ Week is just amazing, it’s so humbling to have an entire week that recognises the amazing and selfless efforts of people.” At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Brunelcare launched its own volunteering initiative to ensure residents, tenants, guests and clients didn’t feel isolated. The group offered volunteering schemes such as Friends on the Phone, a telephone befriending service giving tenants and clients the chance to build relationships with volunteers; Drive to Care, an initiative launched so vital supplies, such as PPE, could be driven across all sites and finally, a pen pal scheme, where over 300 letters were sent to residents and tenants from volunteers.