Close Contact Visiting Arrangements
Evidence of test results must be shown before any visit takes place.
Every care home resident will be able to nominate five named visitor’s who will be able to enter the care home for a visit. Residents will be able to receive a maximum of two named visitors at any one time. These visits will mostly take place in the garden room, apart from end of life and palliative care residents. Where the resident lacks the capacity to make this decision, Somerville will discuss the situation with the resident’s family, friends and others who may usually have visited the resident. In this situation, a person can only be nominated if this has been determined to be in the resident’s best interests in accordance with the Mental Capacity Act.
It is important that the named visitors remain the same as far as possible. This is important in reducing the risk of transmission, by limiting the number of different people coming into the care home from the community. However, we recognize that there will be situations in which a named visitor cannot continue to visit (for example because of illness). In this situation, Somerville will discuss with family members, who is best to continue as the nominated visitor whilst considering the best interests of the resident.
Visits outside of Somerville
Somerville House welcome this news and would like nothing more than to see our residents going out and away from the care home to spend time with their relatives and loved ones, however it is important that we take this next step with caution and continue to promote the safety of our residents and staff that live and work at Somerville House.
It is possible to mitigate and manage infection risks within the controlled environment of the care home, however it is simply not possible to control the environment outside of the care home in the same way. This means that there is still the need for some measures to manage the risk of residents returning from visits and bringing infection into the care home environment.
Only those that have been nominated for close contact visiting will be able to take their relative out.
Visits from other friends and family members
Somerville will continue to offer visits to other friends and family members with arrangements such as outdoor visiting, substantial screens, visiting pods or behind windows. It is most likely that these visits will take place in the garden room.
Please call Somerville House to make an appointment for any type of visit.
If you would like to see a full copy of our visiting policy please contact Somerville House directly.