Aged Care residences – COVID-19 updates

Stage 3 restrictions remain in place across Australia to stop the spread of COVID-19. These restrictions include a ‘stay at home’ order only permitting people to leave home to shop for food and other necessary goods and services, access medical services or provide caregiving, attend work or education where you can’t do those things from home, and exercise. In addition, gatherings have been limited to no more than 2 people, and social distancing practices have become commonplace in our everyday lives.

Under the current state government directives in NSW and Victoria, access to residential aged care facilities is limited to people who meet the following criteria:

• an employee or contractor of the home,
• a person who is providing goods, services or providing health, medical or pharmaceutical services,
• a person who is providing care and support visits,
• a person who is present for the purpose of end of life support for a resident, or
• any person who is required to be present on the premises for the purposes of emergency management or law enforcement.

Of those people who are eligible to enter residential aged care facilities, if any of the following applies to them, then the state government directives prohibit them from entering:

• during the 14 days immediately before the proposed entry, the person arrived in Australia from a place outside Australia,
• during the 14 days immediately before the proposed entry, the person had known contact with a person who has a confirmed case of COVID-19,
• the person has a temperature higher than 37.5 degrees or symptoms of acute respiratory infection,
• the person does not have an up-to-date vaccination against influenza, if the vaccination is available to the person, or
• the person is aged under 16 years (other than for the purposes of providing end-of-life support for a resident of the home).

Enabling the safe return of visitors

Australian Unity has had stronger restrictions in place at our homes, to continue to mitigate the risk of transmission from the community and to protect the health and wellbeing of all residents and employees.

While we must continue to be vigilant, thankfully the rate of transmission of COVID-19 has slowed in the community and we can now look to increase face to face access for visitors and return some services for residents from Monday, 4 May 2020.

From Friday, 1 May 2020, hairdressing services will recommence with the salon set up to facilitate social distancing. We know this service has been greatly missed by residents and will be warmly welcomed back.

To enable residents to meet with their loved ones, while ensuring residents are still able to move freely within their home, we will be implementing strict visitor guidelines. Our residences are home to many residents and as such, we need to carefully manage how many visitors are coming into the home at any one time to enable us to limit the risk of exposure to infection including COVID-19 as much as possible.

You may have seen the Prime Minister’s address on Tuesday 21 April 2020, in which he discussed current state government restrictions on visitors to aged care facilities.  

Australian Unity has heightened our restrictions to ensure the protection of all residents and employees at each of our homes. We will be maintaining the current visitor restrictions until at least 4 May 2020.  

The threat of COVID-19 remains very high to vulnerable people in the community, and by keeping visitors who enter the home to a minimum, we believe we’re able to provide the safest possible environment for residents and our employees who care for them. 

During the heightened restrictions, daily routines are being maintained and residents can move freely throughout the home without having to manage risks associated with having visitors present who may be strangers to our residents. For many of our residents who have cognition issues, their ability to practice social distancing poses a particular risk. If visitors are provided access into all areas of the home (which would be the case if they need to walk through the home to get to a particular resident’s room), it reduces this ability for free movement.

While we’re currently preparing and putting in place additional protocols to enable us to roll back our restrictions and allow the safe return of visitors to our homes, we don’t believe we can do that just yet. In the meantime, you’re encouraged to stay connected to your loved one in other ways. We’ve waived telephone call charges and are continuing facilitate virtual visits via telephone or video calls, including via our new app, CheckedIn Care. 

Leading Age Services Australia (LASA), the national peak body representing a significant number of aged care providers including Australian Unity, continues to advocate for a precautionary approach to visitor restrictions in residential aged care, on a home-by-home basis, with the protection of residents and staff from COVID-19 a critical priority. Click here to read more.

The vulnerability of residents in aged care to COVID-19 remains high despite the positive impact that Level 3 restrictions and social distancing has had on COVID-19 transmissions within Australia.

Australian Unity believes it is essential that we continue to maintain heightened restrictions until at least 4 May 2020 to ensure the continued protection of residents and employees.

A key element of our Better Together philosophy is connection. To support connectedness between you and your loved one during this time, we have waived telephone call charges since 1 March 2020. We are pleased to also be introducing two new initiatives: virtual visits through the CheckedIn Care app and the Better Together challenge.

For more information on Better Together challenge view the ‘How you can help our residents stay connected’ tab.

The risk of exposure to COVID-19 remains extremely high for our residents. For that reason, we have made the decision to maintain the current Australian Unity visitor restrictions for a further 14 days, until at least 20 April 2020.

These heightened restrictions were originally put in place based on representative feedback and to reduce the known risk of community transmission. We understand the implications of this decision, and the ongoing distress this may cause, however we must continue to do all we can to protect residents, as well as our employees.

Despite the restrictions, we do welcome families dropping Easter cards, gifts and eggs to our teams at Reception and we will ensure their timely delivery to residents.

We also encourage exploring other methods of maintaining connection with your loved ones. To better enable this, we are waiving telephone charges, backdated to 1 March 2020, to support residents to communicate with family and friends more frequently. Families have been utilising phone calls, Skype or Facetime, letters, postcards or pictures.

Our team are facilitating these activities, which have so far been very much enjoyed by everyone.

Based on feedback we have received, and the heightened community restrictions announced by both the Australian and State Governments over the weekend we will now be restricting all visitors from entering our Aged Care sites unless they have a direct connection to essential service delivery.

These restrictions will commence at 8pm on Monday 23 March and will be reviewed in two weeks’ time.

Exceptions may be made for loved ones of those residents with special needs (i.e. complex dementia) and those who are palliating.

Residents within the home will continue to live their lives as normally as possible. However, non-essential services such as cafés, hairdressers and beauticians will also close temporarily, and lifestyle activities will be revised to smaller group or one-to-one activities to allow for appropriate social distancing.

We understand this decision will be very difficult and upsetting for our residents and their loved ones. However, due to the rapid spread of COVID-19 in the community, we need to take all possible measures to protect those who are most vulnerable.

On 18 March, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced new measures for protecting our most vulnerable people. This announcement included increased site restrictions to Aged Care residences, including:

No access will be permitted to people who:

• have returned from overseas in the last 14 days
• have been in contact with a person who has a confirmed case of COVID-19 in the last 14 days
• are currently experiencing fever or symptoms of acute respiratory infection (e.g. cough, sore throat, runny nose, shortness of breath)
• after 1 May 2020, no access will be granted to people who have not been vaccinated this year for influenza.

Visits:

• are limited to a maximum of two people (family members, close friends or professional service providers) visiting at one time per day for each resident
• must be short in duration, maintaining social distancing practices (1.5 metres)
• must be held in the resident’s room or outdoors, not in common areas.

There will also be:

• no large gatherings or social entertainment within the residence
• no school groups of any size allowed to visit
• restrictions that prevent children aged 16 or under from visiting, unless exceptional circumstances apply (for example, if their loved one is palliative).

We're all feeling the impact of social isolation, especially our youngest and oldest. Our youngins can find themselves bored at home, while our oldest are without visitors.

If you have a spare moment, why not send through a few words or pictures to lift the spirits of residents and those that care for them? The Better Together challenge aims to connect our residents and carers with the broader community, and to remind them that they are not alone during this difficult time.

Our Better Together challenge invites you and your kids to draw, take pictures of baking achievements, write stories and letters to share with our residents and those caring for them.

Resources:

We've pulled together a selection of resources to get you started:

• Colouring in pages
• Story prompts

Keep checking back here as we add more resources.

What you need to do:

1. Download the resources, or do your own thing
2. Scan or take a picture of your results
3. Send them to bettertogether@australianunity.com.au and be sure to tell us if you have a specific home you want this to get to.

Other ways to get involved

Feel free to share the Better Together challenge with your:

• child's school or kindergarten;
• local sporting club;
• neighbours or friends; and
• grandkids, nieces, nephews or other extended family.

You can also express your interest to join our pen pal program – email us at bettertogether@australianunity.com.au

Better Together is about how we each play our part to make the whole stronger. Although we may be separated by distance we can get through this together. Together is better!

By participating in the Better Together challenge and emailing your letters, stories or pictures to us, you agree that we may give them to residents and carers, display them at our residential aged care sites, and post them on our websites and social media pages for the purpose of promoting the Better Together challenge. If you send us pictures of other people, you agree you have obtained the relevant person's consent, or you (as the parent or guardian of any other child whose photo is provided) consent to provide the images to us. We won't post any images online that identify your child. If you don't want your content to be posted online, you can let us know at the time you send the content to bettertogether@australianunity.com.au.