Feature
Maximising opportunities for activity
Aisling Curran , Catherine Podris and Eadaoin Donaldson , look at the challenge of providing meaningful activities in a care setting during the pandemic .
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n March 2020 , Northern Ireland went into lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic and many non-essential services were forced to stop . This included all day centres for adults with learning disability , and these remained closed until mid-July , when a phased reopening started .
In line with regional guidance , adults living at home with a family carer were prioritised and the vast majority of service users were offered two days ’ a week provision ; a significant reduction , due to the two metre social distancing requirement , which meant that rooms that previously had eight to 10 people in them could now only hold four , including staff .
The impact of this was widespread – reduced social contact and stimulation for service users and increased anxiety and stress for families who may have been juggling work commitments and other caring roles and responsibilities .
Another group of service users also severely impacted were those who lived in a supported living or care setting , including residential , nursing homes and 24-hour supported living . They were not prioritised for a return to day care setting and over 18 months on since the centres closed still do not have routine access to them .
This has meant that care homes , which previously were staffed with the expectation that service users may be out during the day at their day centre , have had to re-work their rotas to provide a higher ratio during the day and , more importantly , provide meaningful activity for them to address their loss of day centre activity .
It must also be remembered that the pandemic has put pressure on everyone , not only in terms of providing a 24-hour service to those we support , but also in people ’ s own personal lives , and all staff were going through significant change both at work and home .
Maintaining contact and meaningful activity
Across the various care settings , both statutory and commissioned , a number of initiatives were put in place to address the potential deterioration in service users ’ overall health and wellbeing .
The various day centres maintained contact with service users through newly-established community hubs , providing activity and resource packs and developing fortnightly or monthly newsletters , which had quizzes , picture colouring
42 OTnews January 2022