With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone’s world changed rapidly. Creative Support has provided services over 40 years and we have survived and even thrived during challenging times throughout this period. By focusing on the people we support and remaining flexible and creative (hence our name), we rise to meet these challenges. COVID-19 has and will continue to present serious obstacles, but we will continue to support the people who rely on us.
When first informed about the threat of COVID-19, we focused on educating staff and participants about it, focusing on the best practices to maintain one’s health and minimize risk of exposure. Our participants and staff did and continue to do a remarkable job of following best practices despite the challenges:
As the virus spread and various levels of government enacted limitations and requirements, we implemented new protocols: we continue to provide face-to-face services for those who require them with participants and staff wearing masks and other personal protective equipment as needed while maintaining social distancing either in participants’ homes and/or in the community:
We quickly expanded how we provide service, including indirect and remote services for those who can be successfully supported in this manner. Management and staff became even more creative to support participants successfully. Staff shop on behalf of some participants and taught others how to obtain delivered groceries, medicine and supplies online. Using technology now readily available, they also taught participants how to use new phone/tablet apps to communicate and hold meetings via video chats as well as talking over the phone regularly to provide guidance with daily living needs as well as much-needed emotional support.
Creative Support is known for our successful and fun socials and these were greatly missed, so we quickly developed a new version of our social program that operates remotely. It has been extremely well received; we saw a dramatic improvement in participants’ emotional well-being, much less feedback about feeling stressed, isolated or bored and many more comments about how happy they are to see and talk with their friends and staff:
We are very grateful to all the families that stepped up to provide natural support and we are happy to continue to support participants who have family support as well as those who do not have natural support in the manner that best suits their needs.
We are now preparing for the future and ways to transition to more typical service methods, but this will be a cautious process that will slowly progress as warranted by conditions and individual need, and there may be periods during which we will return to previous strategies. As always, we will keep our participants’ and staff’s health as our top priority and will individualize our approach to best support each person.
Stay well!
Kathy
Executive Director