At Larchwood Care, the health, wellbeing and safety of our residents is at the heart of everything we do. Although we have made many changes to the way we work, our teams continue to ensure that life is enjoyable and fulfilling for those in our care. With well-established infection control procedures and a dedicated clinical governance and quality team to oversee these, we have been able to react quickly and safely manage the pandemic across our care homes.
Read how we have been using data-driven technology to ensure our care homes remain COVID-19 Safe.
We are delighted to have reunited our residents with their friends and loved ones inside our care homes. Regular, pre-booked visits allow you to spend quality time together, celebrate special occasions and make happy memories.
To keep our residents safe, we are continuing with enhanced cleaning routines and ask all of our visitors to follow the infection control procedures in each of our homes such as regular hand hygiene.
Should you develop symptoms of a virus, such as a continuous cough, high temperature, sore throat or are generally feeling unwell, we respectfully ask you to refrain from visiting until the symptoms have subsided and you feel well again. To help us mitigate the risk of bringing viruses into the care home, if you appear to be unwell while visiting, our team will ask you to reschedule your visit.
With Covid-19 still in circulation, outbreaks within care homes may still occur. In the case of an outbreak, we will be advised and in our response by the Local Director of Public Health or the equivalent in Wales and Scotland.
The manager of your relative’s care home will contact you by letter, email or telephone with any changes to visiting arrangements, advising the start date, booking process and infection control procedures visitors will need to follow.
To ensure you have the best possible experience when visiting your loved one, and to help our teams safely manage the number of visitors in a care home at any one time, we ask that you book your visit in advance. Please call your relative’s care home directly to book your visit.
The team at the home will book your visit for a specified time slot. The length and frequency of visits will be determined by the dynamic risk assessment which has been completed by the home manager and their team.
Please do not turn up at the home expecting to visit if you have not booked in advance.
Please proceed to the designated entrance as indicated at the time of booking where a member of our team will greet you.
We will then:
If you have taken on the role of an essential caregiver for your loved one and are providing personal care, we will need you to provide proof of a negative lateral flow test for your visit to commence.
You may carry out your lateral flow test at home, but you will be asked to provide evidence of a negative test in the previous 24-hours before the visit may commence.
We can also provide a lateral flow test onsite. In this case, the team member who greeted you will escort you to our lateral flow testing area and provide you with instructions. You will need to wait for 30 minutes for the test result, but we will do our best to make sure you are comfortable during this time.
Should your test result be positive, you will be asked to return home immediately and to follow government guidance for self-isolation and COVID-19 testing.
During the pandemic, both our teams and our residents have become well-versed in staying in touch and entertained by virtual means. As the world begins to return to normal, the use of video calls and digital devices will continue in our homes to help you stay in touch between visits or when you find yourself further away for a period of time.
We have had a fantastic take up of vaccinations for both residents and staff to date and the number continues to rise.
With vaccination one of our best defences in the fight against Covid-19, we respectfully recommend that all visitors and residents take the opportunity to be vaccinated before conducting visits.
We are safely welcoming new residents into our homes to support those in the community who require care.
To safeguard the health and wellbeing of our residents and care teams, we will carry out preadmission assessments remotely by telephone, video call, or email. This is to ensure that any new admissions are safe and appropriate, and do not put our residents and staff at risk.
If you would like to make an enquiry please click here to find the contact details for your local care home.
If you have any further questions about our response to COVID-19 or the situation at your local Larchwood Care Home, simply call the care home manager or person in charge.
We thank you for your co-operation and for considering the health and wellbeing of our residents at this time.
For the latest information on Covid-19, please take a look at some of the links below.
