Personal ornaments were removed from Perth and Kinross care home residents’ rooms to minimise the spread of COVID-19 infection, it has been revealed.
A Perth and Kinross health chief stressed it was important to strike the right balance between meeting clinical standards in care homes but still keeping them “homely.”
The issue was raised at a virtual meeting of the audit and performance committee of the Perth and Kinross Integration Joint Board (IJB) last week.
Perth and Kinross Health and Social Care Partnership chief officer Gordon Paterson told the committee they had applied “much more clinical oversight” across Perth and Kinross care homes.
Clinical measures were stepped up during the pandemic to minimise the spread of infection.
Mr Paterson said: “In order to ensure that a care home was less likely to harbour infection on surfaces, a lot of personal ornaments were removed. We were asked to remove a lot of personal ornaments from people’s rooms - or the provider was.
“But we need to get that balance right. It needs to be the case that good professional and clinical standards are able to be achieved whilst we maintain a homely environment.
“I think this is being applied to all care homes at the moment and we need to not lose sight of the fact that we need to make these as homely as possible - whoever’s the provider.”
The Balhousie Care Group operates a quarter of the care homes in Perth and Kinross and is one of Scotland’s largest care home providers.
Its head of operations Sheilah Harvey told the Perthshire Advertiser: “Part of our infection prevention and control procedures has been to keep extraneous items and decorative items to a minimum in our care homes, to prevent possible contamination and cross-infection.
“We encourage home managers to request wipeable items for birthday and other celebrations. For example at Christmas we tried to place trees and other decorations in spaces where residents could enjoy the feeling of the season but where touching was kept to a minimum.”
But Ms Harvey said ensuring a homely environment was always a priority - particularly when residents are unable to see loved ones in person.
She added: “We’ve said from the start of the pandemic that our facilities are residents’ homes, not clinical environments, and that is always uppermost in our minds.
“We encourage residents to have mementoes, photos and personal items - this is their personal space and we believe they should have an input into how their rooms are decorated and furnished.
“When the homes are in lockdown and residents can’t see their loved ones, the access to personal photos and memorabilia is even more important.”
