Zoom chats, PPE stations and Covid tests in the hair salon... what life’s REALLY like in a care home in lockdown
MARY Davidson was a schoolgirl the last time she knew upheaval like this. But even during the Second World War you were allowed to go out; you could see your nearest and dearest. Three-quarters of a century later the coronavirus lockdown finds her aged 91 and holed up in a Scottish care home – statistically the most perilous place in the country she could be during the pandemic.
The number of care home residents who have lost their lives to Covid-19 overtook hospital deaths a month ago. This was not through any failings on the part of the near-1,900 residents who have died but, in large part, it was through systemic ones owing to strategic errors and oversights.
Little wonder that in Jenny’s Well care home in Paisley, Renfrewshire, the television news does not stay on for long in its public areas.
Miss Davidson tells me: ‘It’s very difficult to follow the news in here because so many don’t want to hear the news. If it is on, somebody will come in and push a button.’
But the heartening news for everyone at this care home for the visually impaired is that, after more than three months in lockdown, no positive cases of Covid19 have been recorded among residents or staff.
And while their families may not be allowed to visit them, and residents are forbidden from leaving the grounds, the home in which this exceptional form of house arrest must be endured is among the most modern and scrupulously prepared of care facilities.
It has extensive grounds, a sunny outdoor balcony area to rival any in the Scottish luxury hotel market, a cafe, bar, salon, beautician, ‘multi-faith room’, a cloister which the residents currently use as a kind of indoor exercise track, and, in normal times, visiting entertainers three times a week.
There is even a ‘football memories’ room where, naturally, memorabilia of local club St Mirren abounds.
And while separation from family has, naturally, been upsetting, it has also sparked a steep learning curve on video call apps such as FaceTime and Zoom.
Who says technology is the domain of the young? Residents here range from 78 to 99 and many are iPad literate.
One resident has regular ‘conference calls’ with several members of her family at once and enjoys nothing more than watching them nattering away among themselves in her matriarchal presence.
Miss Davidson, who bought herself a computer when she retired from the Glasgow accountancy firm where she worked, tells me: ‘I have nieces and they can’t come to see me just now but we’ve been on Zoom and we’ve been on something else… what is it? Oh yes, FaceTime, that’s it!’
SHE adds: ‘Zoom is, I think, going to fox me but I can manage to get round the other ones because I did use computers before.’ In common with many of her age group whose memories of a world war bring perspective to the current crisis, Miss Davidson is not one of life’s complainers.
For months now she has witnessed the alarming evidence of a care facility on emergency footing: visitors banned, staff in full PPE, swab tests of noses and throats for everyone, fellow residents selfisolating. And, throughout it all, there has been a mounting sense of dread as care home after care home has recorded first one Covid death and thereafter many more.
Among the victims, a few miles away at a care home in Glasgow, was a close friend of hers who succumbed to the virus just a few weeks after being transferred there. Word reached Miss Davidson as it might do a soldier learning of a comrade’s demise on another battle front – the details sketchy and filled with portent. Yet she says: ‘I think I have been getting on OK with it.
‘We’re in here and that’s us. We know we can’t go out.’
She is sitting in one of the purpose-built facility’s now largely empty lounges as she chats away via video link.
By contrast, the salon around the corner is a hive of activity – sadly not because there is a sudden rush on perms. For more than three months the regular stylist, an external worker, has not been allowed in the building.
No, the salon is now being used as the home’s Covid-19 testing area and, on Fridays, all 88 of its staff present themselves for the procedure whether they are due to be working that day or not.
ALL 41 residents of the care home, run by the charity Royal Blind, were tested at an early stage too. ‘There were three days between that happening and us getting word we were clear,’ says Miss Davidson. ‘It makes you feel much better, but not that it was really worrying. It has happened, there was nothing you could do about it.’
On that point, staff member Stephanie Kirkwood, who has been giving the Mail an exclusive Zoom-based tour of the facility in lockdown, might well disagree.
There was plenty care homes could do to protect their residents, and she says Jenny’s Well acted quickly and decisively to do so.
Miss Kirkwood, who is the home’s lead meaningful activities assistant, says it has been in lockdown since March 14 – more than a week before Boris Johnson announced the official one. A strict staff and medical professionals-only policy has been in place ever since.
The only exceptions to that were family members visiting residents who were close to death due to conditions unrelated to the virus.
‘A few have passed from natural causes,’ says Miss Kirkwood.
‘It’s a real shame they passed away at a time like this when they can’t be surrounded by every one of their loved ones.
‘We only allowed two in who could be with them at all times but they had to have full PPE. We’ve been teaching the families that have come in how to wear the PPE and how to use it as they’re being escorted through the building, so the risk of contamination and all risk is as low as possible.’
Unsurprisingly, the wide colourcoded corridors are largely deserted now as Miss Kirkwood conducts the tour of the facility. Most residents are in their rooms where, perhaps, they feel safest.
Many prefer to take their meals there, albeit isolation is not good for their mental health. A good number, says Miss Davidson, watch TV in their rooms even if there is little on of interest to them.
In her case, she is determined to remain as socially active as possible – lockdown rules permitting – and relishes the chance to catch up with fellow residents who are
prepared to break cover for a trip to the dining room. ‘Where a table would have had eight people at it before, there’s maybe only four now,’ she laments.
It was two years ago that she decided to move from her Glasgow home into a care facility. Little could she have known then her choice of home might mean the difference between life and death. Nevertheless, she chose well.
‘It was my choice that I came out of the house because I lost the sight in my left eye completely and the right one is not so good at all,’ says Miss Davidson, who never married. ‘So the family kept on at me, saying you can’t really stay on your own.’
Since she moved to Jenny’s Well, and before lockdown, her niece Christine has been a twice-weekly visitor. Another niece, Muriel, who lives in St Andrews, travelled to see her most weeks. Notwithstanding her newfound confidence with video apps, technology cannot match the delight of seeing them face to face. And, of course, Miss Davidson misses her days out.
‘But we’ve got terrific grounds here,’ she says. ‘We’re still getting out in the grounds.’
In normal times the care home would be buzzing. Twice a week local nursery children would visit and primary school youngsters came once a week.
If you had a relative in Jenny’s Well you could visit whenever you wanted, so long as it was outwith meal times and you let reception know you were there.
Quite how all this will look in the ‘new normal’ remains to be seen but Miss Kirkwood says changes to the visiting regime will be significant and probably permanent. At reception there is now a PPE station and, when lockdown lifts, all visitors will have to wear it. By implication, the days of turning up unannounced are over, too. An online bookings system has been introduced, with the emphasis on preventing overcrowding.
FOR those in the twilight of their lives whose most treasured moments are spent with their visiting loved ones, the way ahead may seem gloomy and uncertain.
Miss Kirkwood says that, as lockdown began, the explanations about its strictures were tailored to individual residents’ needs.
‘The people who have capacity understood and we were saying we’ll keep you up to date with the news. Other residents, we have some who were social workers previously and they wanted policies and procedures, so we printed them off so that they could read through them.
‘With others we explained with the help of their families. We sat down in a FaceTime meeting and said we’re all going to be talking like this now, we’re all kind of getting down with the latest trends.’
She adds: ‘They have individual phones and external lines which the families phone very frequently but what we have done is, if we feel that they’re not coping, if they need a wee boost, we’ll get the families on the phone, we’ll arrange for them to FaceTime them.’
Even in a facility mercifully clear of the virus thus far, there can be no underestimating the sense of foreboding that can come from seeing staff flit about in face masks or learning that a resident in a neighbouring room is in isolation there for 14 days because she has been to hospital. Yet there remains a sense of fun among many of the residents – even an appetite for the challenge of the new normal.
‘Some of them do like to laugh at us wearing the PPE,’ says Miss Kirkwood. ‘They laugh at you as the sweat drips down from your face from wearing it, so there’s a lot of hilarity from that.’
And such is the enthusiasm for lockdown exercise around the cloister that staff are organising a leader board for those who have completed the most ‘laps’. ‘They’re very competitive, let me tell you that,’ laughs Miss Kirkwood.
They may be moving a little more slowly than they once did. But these are people who have learned to take tribulations in their stride. Long may they inspire younger, more fretful generations.