Our leadership team has been closely monitoring the COVID-19 (coronavirus) situation. Currently, there are no reported cases of COVID-19 in the State of Delaware. We are taking steps to ensure that as this situation rapidly evolves, we provide as much continuity of services as is possible for our clients and students, while ensuring that health and safety is our top priority.
Yesterday, the CDC recommended that older adults and people with serious chronic medical conditions avoid crowds, stock up on supplies, and take extra precautions to avoid infection. The CDC reinforced the importance of home and community-based services at this time, as older adults and people with serious chronic medical conditions will be at increased risk for isolation and lack of access to essential services and supplies. We recognize that Lori’s Hands has an important role to play in ensuring that our clients have access to instrumental and social support.
Earlier this week, we reinforced to students the importance of using caution when deciding whether or not to make client visits. We shared local and federal resources with students to ensure they are aware of infection risk and symptoms. We continue to reinforce to students the importance of monitoring virus spread in communities to which they travel and restricting client visits for at least fourteen days if they have traveled to locations with known virus spread or if they have come in contact with an infected person. We sent our latest COVID-19 update to students late last evening. In that update, we asked students to suspend in-person visits to clients residing in long-term care facilities. We also asked that over the next couple of days, students who do make visits to clients residing in their own homes help clients stock up on supplies (groceries, prescriptions) as appropriate. We’ve asked all students (whether their client lives in a long-term facility or in their own home) to work with their clients to develop plans for virtual (phone, video call) visits in case that becomes necessary. We have provided virtual visit guidelines to all of our students. At this time, we will be temporarily pausing intake and enrollment of new clients to ensure that we can provide high quality services for our existing clients.
Our Lori’s Hands Sunny Day Fund is available, as always, if students identify unmet client needs for which other community resources are not available. We are encouraging students to apply to the fund on behalf of their clients to support costs associated with grocery or meal delivery, or other essentials that may be cost-prohibitive for some of our clients. We expect that there will be higher than usual demand on the Sunny Day Fund this spring. If you would like to contribute directly to the Sunny Day Fund, please visit the fund page here.
Finally, if you are a client, client family member, student, student family member, or another member of our Lori’s Hands community and you have questions or concerns about these updates, please feel free to email or call us directly: contact@lorishands.org, 302-440-5454
