Dear SelectCare Staff,

On behalf of SelectCare Home Care Services in New York City, I thank everyone for providing calm and reassuring care to all of SelectCare clients.  You are an amazing group of home care professionals and we are appreciative of your continued efforts during this Covid-19 pandemic.  Our office remains open for business and our office is staffed with nursing supervisors and staffing coordinators. Friday office hours are from 7am to 6pm for check pick up. Our phones are answered 24/7 and we have on-call supervisors available to speak with you.

We all have been bombarded by information, some of it conflicting and thus raising our level of stress, fear and anxieties. I promise you that our care decisions are based on facts and mandates from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH).  Kelly Takemura, MSN,RN, Director of Nursing continues to monitor notifications and will update and communicate any and all changes as needed.  We remain transparent in our communications and assure you that we are working to provide you with information and guidance in order for you to continue to provide care for your clients as well as protect yourself and your families from illness.

We continue to abide by the current NYSDOH regulation that all home care staff must call into the office before your shift for self-reporting and call in your client’s status and any changes at the start of your shift.   We are here to answer any of your questions regarding care, support and resources for you and your family.   Please make sure to let us know if / when your clients voice their concerns, questions, sadness, panic or anxiety.  We want to address these issues so that our most vulnerable clients do not feel isolated  and without some sense of control of their lives.

At this time, there is no travel ban in place however if things change we have a process in place that will allow staff to continue to travel to their assignments.  We continue to search for N-95 masks and isolation masks. We have enough N-95 masks to provide one (1) mask per staff member.  At this time only medical facilities are required to wear masks. We will alert everyone when additional masks become available.  We have a limited supply of gloves and are able to provide additional packages in small quantities to our staff however we are limiting the amount we are able to provide our staff.  Clients should provide gloves for their own personal care. Please call SelectCare if your client is having difficulty in obtaining supplies.

Until this emergency is over we will continue to provide updates by email and newsletters. Please do not hesitate to call our 24 hour number whenever you have a question or a concern.  Remember to take time for yourself so that you can take care of others.  Listen to music or inspirational messages, read a book, write a poem, turn off the television and take deep cleansing breaths, hug your children, cuddle your pet, smile at people who pass you on the street, call your elderly relative and assure them you are okay, be nice to each other.  We are all in this together.  You are amazing and wonderful humans.  We will support each other as we have in the past, as we are doing so today and as we will do in the future.

Sincerely,

Carla