COVID 19 update from Tony Hegarty, CEO of Liaise.
As everyone is aware, this has been a time of particular challenge for everyone in the care industry and Liaise has had to respond quickly to the changing world that COVID-19 has brought into being. I’m delighted and very proud to be able to report that Liaise has managed this unprecedented situation with calm professionalism which has produced great outcomes for our service users.
Firstly, a few statistics. Liaise operates within London and the South East of England. PHE reports that up to June 7th 2020 in the South East 40.4% of care homes reported a case of Covid-19. In London PHE detail 45.8% of care homes reporting a case of Covid-19. Within Liaise our reported cases total 9%. Tragically, CQC has reported that excess mortality for people with learning disabilities has increased by 153% for the period of the pandemic. At Liaise we haven’t lost any service users to COVID-19 or had any of the small number of service users who have tested positive hospitalised. Of course, there can be no complacency about this and we are reminding ourselves every day that we aren’t out of the woods yet but we are proud of what we’ve achieved so far.
Our staff have also worked tirelessly to support our service users to have the richest quality of life they can have in these unusual and worrying times. That has included work from our staff to help the residents understand what’s going on, finding ways to keep in touch with families during the lockdown and completely reviewing all supported activities to see if they can still take place and, if not, find good alternatives to make sure that the people we support are kept engaged and stimulated.
Some of the key actions we have taken include:
⦁ We ‘locked down’ our services 7 days before the government lockdown.
⦁ Staff have always had access to appropriate PPE and we have ensured that we have adequate stockpiles in each service.
⦁ Our Quality Team give a daily update to Managers which summarises any updated guidance and tells them exactly what they need to do and how to do it- this means Managers don’t have to seek out information, interpret it and decide how to implement it.
⦁ Weekly Senior Management Team calls that to update and coordinate all activities and ensure rapid organisational response when necessary.
⦁ Clarity about priorities- safety first.
Of course, this is only a summary of what we’ve been up to but I hope you can see that we’ve responded both energetically and positively to the COVID-19 challenge.
We have continued to accept referrals for new service users during the COVID-19 period but, obviously, are being very cautious about moving forward with assessments as these need to be done in socially distanced ways and to take account of the risk that COVID-19 still presents. We welcome new referrals and would like to assure any potential referral partners that we can support their clients to move to our services in a planned, well-managed and cautious way. Please contact Mark Horton on (07884) 588 761 if you think we may be able to help you.
Lastly, I’m enormously proud of the people that work for Liaise and how we’ve responded to the challenges of the last few months and I’m not going to miss this opportunity to say ‘thank you’ .
For more information about the services that make up Liaise please visit our vibrant and informative websites:
https://www.sequencecaregroup.co.uk/
https://www.progresshousing.com/
https://www.liaise.com/
