An update for our Opal family: Friday 29 May, 2020

As restrictions begin to ease in our communities, we are carefully and gradually reintroducing some of the activities that needed to be suspended due to COVID-19. A recent survey of residents identified hair dressing, and local walks as two of the most important things to reintroduce first, therefore we are pleased to advise that these activities have recommenced within certain parameters. We have closely assessed our processes to ensure we can deliver these activities safely and with spatial distancing in place.

The following services and activities have recommenced:

• In-home hairdressing
• External walking groups for health and wellbeing
• Pastoral care visits, in accordance with our visitor arrangements outlined below
• Internal care home cafés have reopened
• Bus trips (excluding Queensland due to local state regulations) for health and wellbeing to locations identified through a safety assessment, for example parks and picnic areas but not shopping centres or cafes

We continue to enable visits to our home in line with the Industry Code for Visiting Residential Aged Care Homes during COVID-19, and we have introduced weekend reception services to provide Active Screening seven days a week. Active Screening remains an essential process for every person (including team members and service providers) who enters our care home.

The Code has now been finalised and is available via the COTA website at:

https://www.cota.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Industry-Code-RACH-Visits-during-COVID-10-FINAL-as-at-11-May-2020.pdf

Our visitor arrangements are as follows:

Compassionate visits

• To support residents who are palliating or nearing end of life, visitors who have a clearly established pattern of frequent visits and involvement in providing a resident’s care and support, and visitors who have travelled extensive distances to visit the resident.
• Children 16 years and under may be allowed compassionate visits in special circumstances under prior agreement with the General Manager
• These arrangements are put in place in close consultation between our team and relatives on a case-by-case basis and take into account the individual circumstances of the resident.

For all other visitors:

• Two visitors per resident may visit for a total of two hours, twice a week. This is to enable us to manage the inflow of visitors safely and with spatial distancing in place.
• All visits must be booked in advance through our reception.
• All visitors must comply with our Active Screening process detailed in previous communications, which includes temperature checking, questions regarding any respiratory symptoms, and the provision of evidence of a current flu vaccination. Please contact us if you need further advice on active screening.

We thank all of our Opal care communities for their ongoing support as we strive to enable the safe resumption of activities that our residents enjoy and continue to protect all of those we care for.