Victoria Sessler, the owner of Kenwood Care Assisted Living, was recently interviewed for a local business series called “The Point.” “The Point” airs on varying business channels highlighting small businesses and challenges they are facing. We all know that COVID-19 has created an enormous challenge for the assisted living community as we try to care safely for our elderly. Victoria explains how Kenwood Care has faced the COVID-19 pandemic and prevented COVID-19 in its assisted living homes.
In this 9-minute video segment, Victoria highlights how Kenwood Care Assisted Living has stopped the Corona Virus from entering the doors of her four residential assisted living homes. Sessler opens up about how they took action in early March when concerns were coming to light about the dangers for the senior community. She realized they needed to take precautions for not only her residents but also for her live-in staff. She goes on to list all the efforts around securing protective care for her team before the medical world saw shortages, restricting visitation for her residents, working closely with her live-in staff who voluntarily quarantined, and coordinating how visits would take place. All of these efforts needed to occur for Kenwood to run safely, but also keep the mental health of her residents in mind. Kenwood immediately outfitted each home with iPads for virtual visits and coordinated window visit procedures where residents could talk on the phone and see their loved ones.
Keeping Coronavirus-free isn’t just about the residents, though. The Kenwood Care business model since 1995 has been to have live-in staff on site. The loving staff that Kenwood has in place volunteered to maintain the quarantine status. The Kenwood business office began running all errands for staff such as banking, post-office, shopping for loved ones, and more. It has indeed been a team effort; the fact that Kenwood has been a family-run business for 25 years has allowed this to come to fruition.
As the virus continued to spread throughout the world, Victoria realized she needed to take additional measures in her assisted living homes. The Sesslers have instituted the use of medical tents for necessary procedures that can take place outside of the house. They set up a quarantined apartment for incoming staff to ensure they are COVID free before they begin working for Kenwood Care. Kenwood has a second quarantine apartment available for use to admit new residents to their senior living communities.
COVID-19 has been kept at bay from Kenwood Care since the beginning. Kenwood Care will continue to develop and follow protocols that are in the best interest of their residents and their loving staff. It is Kenwood’s hope that through their strict efforts, they will continue to remain virus-free.