Co Down care home staff become ‘residents’ to combat Covid-19 risk

Six team members volunteered to remain on site for an initial three-week period while the home is closed to both visitors and other staff.

As manager Frances Mullan explained, the initiative was the brainchild of her daughter Aoife and another young staff member Alannah.

“We have moved in for three weeks and we are on day three,” she said.

“That is myself, two seniors and two of my youngest staff members, and our head of kitchen.

“It’s been a real morale boost. We are working together and we are taking it in turns to do five hours’ work and then four hours off.

“We’ve just had to let the rota go to pot because our other 11 workers are off, so that helps us lock down the home.

“No one has been in the home for the past two and a half weeks apart from staff. We spoke to all the staff to see how they felt about it. So we all packed our bags, said goodbye to our families and moved in.”

Frances said a small number of ancillary staff are on stand by to step in if any of the live-in team falls ill.

“We can’t totally eliminate [the risk of infection] but I would say we’ve probably reduced it by about 90%,” she said.

The Ard Cuan home, close to the shore of Strangford Lough, caters for 17 residents at present.

Frances Mullan has been working at Ard Cuan since 1995.

She said the whole team has been thinking of ways to keep everything ticking over while at the same time ensuring that no one was being put at unnecessary risk during the coronavirus outbreak.

We just had to make sure that we’ve done everything we could,” she said.

“Our residents live here 24/7 so this actually gives us more of an insight into their daily lives in the home. And also, it gives them additional comfort to know that we are here around the clock.

“We have daily meetings with the residents to give them updates on the virus and they have all said that they feel so much safer that we are here – and that nobody is coming in and nobody is going out.

“We are a mild to moderate demential home so they do have a fair bit of understanding about what is going on.”

Frances, who is also a director at Ard Cuan, said she had no hesitation in implementing the new regime once she had checked if it was feasible.

“My daughter Aoife, and Alannah, who are both 24, came to me on Tuesday morning and said ‘we think it might be a good thing if we move in [to the home]’. They suggested getting fold-away beds for once the residents go to bed. So I looked at the logistics of it.

“We have only 17 residents and the six staff is more than enough. Those six staff are of different ranks and different skills so it has worked out really well in this case. How would you do that with an 80-bed home? I think that would be impossible.”

Commenting on how everyone will feel after their three-week lock down, Frances said: “It’s going great so far, but if you did an interview in three weeks’ time who knows,..” she joked.