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Tom, our Chef, found an unexpected visitor in St Omer on Christmas morning. Being a quick witted and resourceful chap, Tom detained him by sitting on him! Dawn seemed to find the whole encounter entertaining!

With the substantial increase and spread of the Omicron Variant we have reluctantly decided to limit visiting to ONE RELATIVE per day with immediate effect. You will appreciate that we take this action very reluctantly, but to protect our Residents and Staff. Even though all Staff are fully vaccinated, the impact of COVID-19 on the management and delivery of care is enormous (as we experienced in January 2021) and we are doing our very best to manage this risk.

We have finally managed to regain some control of our website! During the second lockdown some kind individuals targeted our site and initially took it down completely. They then generously offered to let us have control back if we made a substantial contribution to their funds in a crypto-currency; we declined their offer! After a lot of time, and support from third parties, we have managed to regain some level of control and can now start publishing posts again. Currently (22nd December 2021) we cannot yet update pages, and it appears that we have lost the video that used to play on the front page, but we hope to regain full control in early 2022. In the meantime there is an important update to follow relating to visiting, so please come back soon.

You may have heard that the government has released its latest advice about visits to Care Homes.

We appear to have already anticipated these recommendations. You can read what they say here.

We will continue with our visits to the gazebo until the visiting pod is erected (in the last week of August).

Over the past weekend (18-19 July) we have moved our website and email hosting to a new supplier. Sorry if you noticed any interruption in service during that time.

We are back to normal again!

Following my post over the weekend I’m pleased to let you know that the Gazebo is up and we are open for visits from Tuesday 30^th June.

Please phone St Omer to book a half hour slot, there are three each morning and three each afternoon, with a maximum of two visits per Resident each week at present.

Please arrive at St Omer on time and ring the front door bell. A member of staff will ask you to complete a Declaration (each time you visit) and take your temperature.

Don’t forget to bring a mask, and if you consider yourself a high risk a pair of gloves might be a good idea too.

For the time being the same person should visit each time to minimise the increased risk that having visitors poses.

Please do not turn up ‘on spec’ as we will have to turn you away. We are also responsible for your safety as well as our Residents and Staff.

 

Kind regards

Hello everyone, I hope you are all still well and continuing to weather this storm.

We have been planning how we will restart visiting at St Omer, and we are now in a position to share these with you; they comprise both short and medium term plans.

We had hoped that we could start visits within St Omer in the near future, but I expect you will agree that there are still far too many uncertainties and differing scientific opinions to mean that this is a safe and sustainable objective at present.

We expect you have read and heard of the deaths that some care and nursing homes have had both nationally and locally when COVID-19 manages to break their bio-security, and we hope that you agree with us that we must do everything in our power to continue to prevent this.

In the short term we will be;

• Erecting a temporary gazebo on the decking to enable one-to-one visiting to take place. This will happen this coming week and we will contact you as soon as it is in place and we are happy that we have created a safe environment for your relative, yourself and our staff. Once this is in place;
  • We will have a schedule of half hour visiting slots from 10:00 to 12:00 and 14:00 to 16:00 where,
  • ONE person may visit, they will be required to provide and wear a face mask and respect social distancing (which is still 2m at present in our case). For the time being that person should remain the same (i.e. not cycling through a family group) until restrictions ease further.
  • That person will be required to sign a declaration each time that they visit to confirm that they have had no persistent cough, high temperature or contact with anyone who has COVID-19 or is isolating pending a COVID test.
  • That person must consent to have their temperature being taken prior to meeting their relative.
  • Each Resident will not have more than two visits each week (to allow each Resident a fair number of visits and enable staff to sanitise the area between visits).
  • There will be a fifteen minute break between each visit to allow for sanitising and to ensure that we maintain separation between visitors.

In the medium term (we are hoping within the next two months);

• We plan to purchase and have installed a Visiting Pod in the front garden in front of the office to provide a more permanent solution.

None of us know how long this pandemic might last, but we are assuming that there is likely to be some form of second spike in infections and we want a solution that might take us through that period and until some more long term treatment (such as a vaccination) is universally available. We think it quite possible that this might not be until this time next year.

We appreciate that the above comprises a lot of rules; we really have tried to keep these to a minimum.

Please do respect these rules and our staff in ensuring that we can maintain this regime.

As before if you have any questions, worries or concerns do please email me back and I will do my best to address them.

With kind regards

This week we have tested all Residents and Staff for Coronavirus. All the results received so far have been negative, we expect the remaining results to arrive in the coming week.

As you are probably aware, hospitals and care homes in the south-west have not yet seen the significant reduction in cases that have been seen in the community, so we continue to maintain a high degree of vigilance.

The four first floor rooms mentioned in out ‘Looking Forward’ post will be ready for occupation by the end of the coming week.

As usual, we hope you all remain fit and well, and that life is slowly returning to something more ‘normal’.

Best wishes

We hope you are safe and well and adjusting to these extraordinary times.

We thought we would start to share with you our thoughts on the process of reopening St Omer to both Relatives and new Residents. We’re not going to call this ‘The New Normal’ because we hope that this is just a transitory phase before a return to something that looks far more like the way things were back in ‘The Good Old Days’ (or February 2020 if you prefer).

It goes without saying that all our plans are best intentions at this stage, but are guided by our intention to keep both our Residents and Staff as safe as the current situation allows, and minimise all unnecessary risks to both groups.

Clearly the first question in resuming relative visits will be when? Currently the Rate of Infection (the R rate) in Care Homes both nationally and locally is still increasing, and we will not contemplate opening St Omer to anyone until this current spike has not only levelled out but has significantly reduced. So far, the R rate for Care Homes has not been separately reported so we are working on information provided to us by the Care Trust, with whom we speak daily. When we hear the consistent clear evidence that the R rate has fallen in Care Homes locally then we will start to implement our plans.

Visiting

Let’s start with visits from relatives.

Initially we will allow one relative within St Omer at one time, so we will need to implement a system of booking visits. Each visit will last no longer than fifteen minutes (to allow for as many Residents’ relatives as possible during the day, and for subsequent disinfection between visits). Every relative will be accompanied from the front door to their relative’s room by a member of staff (to minimise contact with other Residents) and back to the front door at the end of the visit. All relatives will be required to comply with the social distancing requirements in place at that time (currently 2 metres).

There are some caveats to this plan. Firstly, EVERY visitor MUST wear a mask and disposable gloves whilst in St Omer. Secondly we might stop visits without notice if we have any form of outbreak within St Omer (not only COVID-19) or if we hear that the Rate of Infection locally or nationally has risen again (and this is considered quite possible according to current experience in other parts of the world).

We appreciate that this is very far from perfect from everyone’s perspective but given that we closed to visitors early in this pandemic, we are going to take a cautious and measured approach; the alternative does not bear thinking about.

Admissions

Now let’s turn to new Admissions.

We currently have four empty rooms and we must plan to accept new admissions to assure the financial future of St Omer for both Residents and Staff.

We have identified an area of St Omer that we can safely use as an isolation area for any new Residents until such time that we are satisfied that they present no additional risk to our existing Residents and Staff. That area is rooms 21 to 23 on the first floor.

Two Residents have been temporarily moved to other rooms to enable this to happen, and we are grateful to their families for the understanding that they have shown. It is our intention that these Residents will return to their original rooms when circumstances allow.

We will be performing some essential redecoration in this area prior to any admissions, and we will be erecting a barrier and signage to stop accidental incursions into this area.

We will perform an even more detailed Health Assessment of any new Resident. WE WILL NOT ACCEPT ANY POTENTIAL RESIDENT WITH AN ACTIVE DIAGNOSIS OF COVID-19. Any potential Resident who has recovered from COVID-19 will need to have two COVID-19 free tests before we will consider them.

The new Resident will be required to remain isolated in their own room for a period of fourteen days after admission before being allowed to associate with other Residents. These Residents will receive no visitors other than essential healthcare professionals.

We do appreciate that you may have questions about the above. You will also appreciate that we have never been in this situation before and we do not claim any more expertise or knowledge than anyone else, so we might need to change or modify our plans as we better understand a constantly changing and developing situation.

If you do have any questions please feel free to call me (Ian) on 07952 476 893 or email me at ianday@st-omer.org and I will do my best to answer your questions or address your concerns.

Lastly can we remind you that we are keeping a blog at www.st-omer.org and we will publish any urgent news there, so please do take a look periodically.

Hoping you all stay safe and well.

JO & IAN DAY

Thankfully both Residents and Staff remain free of the virus. Most staff have remained well since we closed to visitors and Jo and I want to offer them our sincere and heartfelt thanks at a time when they are just as much on the front line as NHS staff.

We are being inundated with advice from all quarters, but Rachel has commented how much she appreciates the support being provided by the Care Trust; something we haven’t always been able to say in the past.

As many of you will appreciate we were very quick to close our doors to visitors, some time before the lockdown was announced. We didn’t make that decision lightly, and we were concerned about the impact of that decision on our Residents,  but I’m pleased to say that in hindsight it was the right thing to do.

Given the vulnerability of our Residents to such an indiscriminate and invisible threat I think it fair to say we will take a cautious approach to reopening to visitors when that time comes.

We trust everyone remains well, and don’t forget STAY INSIDE, STAY SAFE!!

It’s been another challenging week of updated and changing advice; the upshot of which is that we are clearly in this period of lock-down for the long term, I would suggest for three or four more months at a minimum.

Everyone, Staff and Residents, are still symptom free and we continue to turn away everyone except vital healthcare professionals (who we are also keeping to a minimum).

I understand we have been having some problems configuring Skype, but I will be going in to St Omer on Tuesday to undertake some important infrastructural changes and will attempt to sort this out while I am there.

If you would like Skype contact with your Relative or Friend please email Rachel at rachellambourne@st-omer.org with your Skype address and preferred contact time between 10:00 and 12:00 in the morning and 14:00 and 16:00 in the afternoon and we will sort this out as soon as possible.

I hope you all remain well, and if anyone is experiencing any difficulties that you feel we could help with please do not hesitate to contact us.

This week has seen enormous changes in the UK and Europe in terms of the spread of Coronavirus, with the government focus moving from containment to delay.

We closed the home to all visitors last Thursday morning and deliveries are made to the front porch. I have avoided going in to St Omer for all but the most pressing activities.

In light of the latest advice from Prof. Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, we have taken the decision to continue our enforced isolation and keep our doors closed for the foreseeable future.

Most Relatives have been extremely understanding, but if this decision presents you with a problem do please ‘phone Rachel or me.

As soon as we see signs of the pandemic plateauing we will plan to allow some carefully restricted visiting, This will be outside, under cover at the front of the building, but more on this at the appropriate time.

On a positive note no Residents or Staff have shown any signs of infection since we closed last week.

We will continue our hygiene regime, keep infection risks to an absolute minimum, and keep our fingers tightly crossed!

Please check back here for updates, and I hope you are all well!!

As there are now two confirmed cases of Coronavirus at Chelston Hall Surgery (our local surgery) we have decided to close St Omer to ALL VISITORS until Monday 16 March to protect our Residents and Staff.

We thank you all for your understanding at this uncertain time.

Please check back here for updates.

Please see the letter below from Jo.

I’m writing to let you know about some changes which are due to take place at St Omer in the New Year.

After nearly 17 years as Registered Manager, it’s time for me to retire from the role of day-to-day running of the home.  I’m sure you’ll be delighted to hear that Rachel Lambourne is going to take over that position.

For the past year Rachel has been providing Ian and I with sterling support as Deputy Manager and she is currently going through the process required by the CQC to become our Registered Manager.

Tracey Meloy will be taking over the post of Deputy Manager and with the support of our Team Leaders and Carers, I know that they will continue to provide the first-class standard of care that you have become used to at St Omer.

As Owner I will still be closely involved in the management of the home with Ian, but I am looking forward to being able to spend some more time with family (and dogs!)

Ian will continue to be at St Omer most days during the week but you will find that he too will be spending less time at St Omer.

In case you wondered (and to scotch any rumours) we are not planning on selling St Omer in the foreseeable future.

If you have any queries as to how you feel these changes may affect you, please don’t hesitate to phone, or call in and have a word with either Rachel or me.

With kind regards.

JO DAY

Registered Owner

On Friday 22nd November at 3:00 pm we are hosting a chat, cuppa and cream tea with the Ageing Well Torbay Team. Do pop in if you are around that day.

Everyone we have spoken to since our inspection report  was finally made available by the CQC is totally bemused and bewildered by their rating. The report (which is worth a read if you haven’t yet) is full of Outstanding and Excellence. No, it makes no sense to us either!!

The CQC @CareQualityComm has recently published our Inspection Report. We expected this to have an Outstanding outcome as our inspector had told us (and other third parties he had spoken to following the inspection) this at the end of our inspection and right up until 15 May.

We suspect that the CQC has a hidden agenda against which we cannot appeal.

Please read the full story on our website st-omer.org under the CQC Inspection tab.

Please RT this story – we really need to try to get the wrong righted!!

We are looking for a part time Maintenance Person who can take on repairs, some painting & decorating and small projects. Hours by negotiation. If you are interested give me a call or use our Contact Form.

The Staff and Residents at St Omer wish you all a Happy Easter!

After many months in the making and a few bumps in the road we are delighted that our new website is now up and running. We hope you enjoy it.