Abbotsford seniors home to hire family members following COVID-outbreak

ABBOTSFORD (NEWS 1130) — Family members of residents at a large seniors home in Abbotsford could soon be closer to their loved ones.

That’s because Menno Place is looking to hire residents’ family members, following a COVID-19 outbreak that is working its way through some staff and residents there.

The outbreak began on Nov. 17, when a resident was moved to acute care so she could receive treatment for a potentially fractured wrist.

However, when she came back five hours later, she brought the virus with her but had no symptoms.

“She spread it to her buddies who she sits with in the dining room because she has dementia, and they like to touch each other,” says Menno Place CEO Karen Biggs. “Subsequently, now we’ve got 13 residents who are now positive and 15 staff.”

To put that in context, the facility employs 675 people and has 700 seniors living on site.

However, she says because of the outbreak, there are safety protocols that restrict staff members to just one unit of the facility.

When you add that to the positive cases, and the people that need to self-isolate, she says, they do need some extra hands on deck to carry out essential services, like housekeeping, laundry, and food services.

“When you have an outbreak, your staff is assigned to one unit,” explains Biggs. “So for instance, someone who cleans usually two units, one unit in the morning and one in the afternoon, all of the sudden can’t go to the second unit, so we found the need for enhanced cleaning needed more bodies to do it.”

She says they’ve been trying to fill cleaning positions since March, to no avail, so she decided to think outside the box.

“And I said, well, let’s go to our families,” Biggs says. “I said, if my mom was in a care home, I’d clean my mom’s room and make it spic and span because I want to take care of my mom.”

She says in addition to a paycheque, those hired will have opportunities to see their loved ones, something that has been difficult for many in this province during this pandemic.

“If they go by their mom’s room, they can definitely say, ‘Hi mom! I’m just cleaning the hand-rails’, if they want to take their breaks they can visit with mom on their breaks because they are hired employees.”

Since putting out the idea on Saturday, Biggs says 32 people have already stepped forward.

“Many of them are saying, I can do a six-hour shift, I can do an eight-hour shift, I can come three days a week, one person even said I can do six days a week,” says Biggs. “There’s a real sense of family and a sense of caring for our people.”