Visiting Beyond the Pandemic - A Review of Hertfordshire Care Homes
Our Approach
Alongside a review of published website information we ran an online survey and held interviews with residents and their loved ones to explore their views and experiences.
Using our findings, we produced a number of suggestions for improvement, which aim to help care homes and other care providers across Hertfordshire deliver a positive visiting experience for residents and loved ones.
What did we find?
- 20% of care homes had not updated their websites about visiting arrangements during the pandemic and had little or no information on Covid-19.
- Only 49% of care home websites had information about the 'Essential Care Giver' role - the person who can visit even during an outbreak.
- Visiting information is often generic to the Care Home group and might not reflect what is happening in the individual home.
- Visiting information was generally easy to find, although websites often use different headings for information about visiting, which could be confusing for loved ones.
- There were some excellent examples of what care homes had done to facilitate care home visiting or to support families, such as online booking systems, visitor pods and helplines.
- The home pages for many care homes focussed on providing information to potential new residents rather than existing family and friends.
What happens next?
Based on the findings presented within our report, we have produced a number of suggestions for improvement. These include:
- Improving website information, content and design to make information more easily accessible.
- Making more effective use of social media including Facebook and Twitter, as ways for families and friends to keep up to date on restrictions and activities.
- Providing free lateral flow tests for visitors when infection rates in the community are high.
- Encouraging mask wearing in communal areas of care homes.
We presented the findings to the Hertfordshire Strategic Quality Improvement Group and they were positively received with members already thinking about how they can support care homes with improvements to their websites and social media.
We will also monitor how the findings are being used through our holding to account role, where we regularly meeting with health and social care leaders to raise patient concerns and ensure services are taking action to remedy these.
It is likely that we will get more Covid-19 and flu outbreaks as we approach Autumn and Winter. Visiting must be prioritised and ideally, any changes to visiting policies should be regularly viewed in consultation with residents, families, carers and workers.
In the words of one survey respondent:
"Give more time to take views of families into account. The care home rules have not been negotiable."
What is the Hertfordshire Strategic Quality Improvement Group?
The group works within the framework of the Hertfordshire and West Essex Integrated Care System (ICS) and System Quality Group and has a focus on ensuring safe and high quality residential and home care.
