News

Happy Easter to you all.

I firstly want to acknowledge that Easter will be tough on many of the people we support, our family members and friends as we are unable to see each other face to face. Whether you are religious or not, Easter for many of us is a time to get together with the people who are important to us. While I know that many of you are in regular phone or online contact with individuals and staff, it’s not the same when you can’t be there in person.

Therefore, I want to talk a little bit about what is happening in our services and pay tribute to our staff. For weeks now our staff have been working hard to make sure people are having fun while staying safe in lockdown. Please check out some of the images that we have received.

I am so impressed with our workforce. Our staff are balancing their own families and commitments with supporting people in our services. We are determined to do the best job for people during these difficult times. We have a daily newsletter that we are using to update all staff on the latest news and information they need. Our staff in services are using it as a celebration feed to share the great things happening in their services and challenge other areas to activities. It is a source of pride and inspiration.

But right now in our services the Easter challenge is on. We have baking and cooking challenges, craft challenges, treasure hunts and a chicken dance competition among a long list of activities.

We look forward to opening our doors and catching up in person soon. I’m sure you, like me, are cautiously optimistic about the lower numbers of COVID-19 cases being reported in the past few days. We are all hopeful that the Level 4 restrictions could be lifted in another couple of weeks although we expect some restrictions for safety to still apply. In the meantime, I want to assure you that we are utterly committed to the safety of our staff and the people we support. We will not relax our stringent policies and we will stick to the lockdown rules until it is safe to make changes.

We all look forward to that time.

I hope you get to enjoy some rest and recreation over Easter and the weeks ahead.

Ralph Jones
IHC Group Chief Executive