After 6 months of living with Covid 19 in society, residents at Farnham Mill have been continuing to enjoy care, comfort and companionship, despite the challenges of social distancing and Covid 19 continuing.
Everyday residents enjoy fulfilling experiences, which might not be readily available to older people living at home in isolation.
What is unusual at this nursing home is, all the staff are permanent employees, with no agency staff. This leads to the residents feeling at the centre of the home, with their team of nurses, carers, activities team, chefs, maintenance, cleaners, and administrators to name a few, all the staff work as one to ensure the residents are happy and well cared for.
What is so lovely, is when the residents talk about the staff, they really know them and vice versa, down to the finest details, such as how they like their tea. An activities team member said: “What is a joy, is seeing happy residents at Farnham Mill. Some residents are happy having time and space for personal reflection and their hobbies, others like to join in with activities such as; exercise classes, crosswords, quizzes, social clubs like Gardening, Cooking and just being at the heart of the home.” The residents are able to choose from a variety of activities and participate in what they prefer as long as they are happy.
Connecting with family and friends is also very important, and Farnham Mill has been working in partnership with the resident’s families to organise regular safely distanced garden visits with daily skype, facetime and zoom calls taking place alongside the visits. Moving into the Autumn, visiting is going from the garden to indoors with visiting rooms cleaned between visits with specialist trigger powered Covid safe cleaning equipment. It’s all about the residents being safe and being happy, whilst socialising with their families.
The home has increased staff numbers to include extra cleaners to achieve a safe environment along with addition staff to organise and test the staff and residents. All staff, visitors and residents have daily wellbeing checks, to include their temperature being taken before their day begins. Farnham Mill are testing their staff and volunteers weekly and residents monthly. There is 6 months’ worth of PPE stock and staff wear face coverings as a minimum to avoid bringing Covid into the home.
Nurses and carers continue to work closely with the homes retained Doctors to help prevent hospital visits and improve the health and wellbeing of the residents.
Farnham Mill remains a reassuringly happy home, where residents are safe and life goes on as near to normal as possible. Where residents can still enjoy shared experiences and companionship, which is just as meaningful and vibrant as ever.
If you like to find out more please contact Elizabeth Butt on 07704 426475 elizabeth@woodlands-hillbrow.co.uk