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Franklin Carriage House residents can begin receiving visitors inside in a special visiting area at the front of our building.
All visits will take place following best practices for dealing with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Visits may take place from 9-11 a.m. and 1-4 p.m. Those interested in visiting should call the Franklin Carriage House kitchen at 285-2945 to make arrangements.
With cold weather already here and the holiday season getting closer every day, we’ve been at work, planning for ways to keep residents safely in touch with loved ones despite the ongoing concerns around COVID-19. The result is a visiting area in the Franklin Carriage House where residents can spend time with up to two guests at a time while maintaining social distancing and preventing potential spread of the virus.
To best explain how visits will work, lets break them down into two parts: getting into the building and the visit itself. The next couple of sections are super-important, and I’m writing them in as straight-forward a way as possible so that the process is laid out clearly.
Getting Inside
No more than two visitors will be allowed in Franklin Carriage House at a time.
We highly recommend that visitors call the Carriage House kitchen at 285-2945 before visiting so that staff can make appropriate preparations and to avoid needing to wait outside for another visit to end.
Visits should only take place if you are able to answer NO to ALL of the following screening questions:
• In the past 48 hours, have you experienced:
- fever or chill
- cough
- shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
- fatigue
- muscle or body aches
- headache
- new loss of taste or smell
- sore throat
- congestion or runny nose
- nausea or vomiting
- diarrhea
• In the past 14 days, have you had close physical contact (6 feet or closer for at least 15 minutes) with a person who has laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 or anyone with symptoms consistent with COVID-19?
• Are you isolating or quarantining because you may have been exposed to a person with COVID-19 or are worried that you may be sick with COVID-19?
• Are you currently waiting on results of COVID-19 test?
All visitors will be asked these questions by Franklin Carriage House staff upon arrival for visits. If you’ve been to a doctor’s office or other places serving the public, these questions are probably familiar to you, and we appreciate your understanding our needing to ask them.
All visitors must wear face masks over their noses and mouths, and they must provide contact information in our contact tracing binder.
While Visiting
The resident you are visiting will be brought from their room to the visiting area prior to your coming inside. Wearing a face mask over their nose and mouth, they will sit behind a taped-off area on one side of a table that has a plexiglass divider on it. The resident you are visiting will stay in that area until after you leave.
There is tape on the floor on the visitor-side of the table as well. All visitors must stay behind this line to maintain social distancing.
When done visiting, Franklin Carriage House staff must be notified so that the visiting area can be sanitized and residents can be brought back to their rooms safely.
Ok. That’s the rules out of the way. Now some personal thoughts …
We know this is a hard time, and we understand that this visiting set-up isn’t ideal. However, it is something positive to build on. We hope more than anything that we can soon get back to a point where you can come and go from Franklin Carriage House, visiting your loved ones in their rooms and taking them out to wherever and do whatever you enjoy doing together.
But as winter draws closer and the days grow shorter, having this visiting space is better than not being able to visit at all. Like you, we don’t know what the weeks and months ahead will bring, and we’re taking it a day at a time. We’re ready to relax expectations as the situation improves, but we’re also ready to tighten restrictions again should things get worse.
We’ll keep you updated about any changes as they come along, and we appreciate your understanding, compassion, and patience so much. Thank you for keeping our residents, staff, and community safe.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact Franklin Homestead & Carriage House Manager Stacy Silloway at 285-2944 or stacy@franklincarriagehouse.org or Assistant Manager Ethan Dezotelle at 285-2944 or ethan.fhi.fch@gmail.com.
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