Coronavirus update from Ben’s Chief Executive, Zara Ross

At Ben, we continue to take the situation regarding Coronavirus (COVID-19) very seriously, particularly as a provider of care and support to older people who are in a more vulnerable group.

We are doing everything we can to protect our care centre residents, sheltered housing residents, day centre members, Lynwood Village owners and employees in this situation and we will continue to do so.

We have plans in place to mitigate the risk of infection across all Ben sites. We also have a dedicated response team who meet on a regular and ‘as-needed’ basis to keep abreast of the fast-changing situation and all relevant Government advice to respond accordingly.

You can find further details on the actions that Ben has taken in each area of the charity, below:

Ben Care Centres and Day Care Centre
(Birch Hill Care Centre, Town Thorns Care Centre, Lynwood Care Centre, Coventry Day Care Centre)
We have very good infection prevention and control measures across all of our care centres which we routinely review in order to ensure the best practice is in place to prevent any escalation of the virus.

We continue to ensure that the health and safety of our residents and customers is balanced with their wellbeing needs. Therefore, we have developed specific visiting arrangements for each site in line with local authority guidance and within the practical constraints of each environment. Please contact your local care home for further information on visiting arrangement.

To find out more about how we have responded to Covid-19 across our care centres, click here.

Lynwood Village
To reduce the risk of infection within our retirement village community near Ascot in Berkshire we have adapted visiting to allow relevant “social bubbles” in line with government guidance, adjusted our services to support our owners, and re-designed some of our facilities to reduce potential exposure to the virus.

Health & Wellbeing support for the automotive industry
Our Helpline for automotive industry people remains open and operating as normal. Our support service is also operating as normal, with limited safe face-to-face support arrangements where these are required.  We encourage those who need support with their health and wellbeing to make use of our tips, advice & tools online at www.ben.org.uk and www.ben.org.uk/coronavirus or get in touch via our Helpline if they need tailored support.

Ben continues to collaborate with automotive employers where appropriate to find ways to deliver planned workplace training sessions and support.

Ben employees
Home-working arrangements were applied to all Ben’s head office-based employees back in March and remain in place, whilst all of our Care & Village Services colleagues are working as flexibly and safely as possible.

The safety of all vulnerable people living at Ben sites and our employees is of utmost importance to Ben, so we will continue to do everything we can to mitigate against the risk of infection. We continue to follow Government guidelines and respond accordingly.

We are extremely proud of the way our staff adapted to this challenging and ever-changing situation, with continued drive to provide support for life for automotive industry people, as well as the continuing commitment to looking after our care centre residents and retirement village owners on a day-to-day basis. Now more than ever before, the people we provide care and support for are at the heart of everything we do.