First ‘Nightingale’ care home opens at four-star Cedar Court hotel at Ainley Top

Calderdale Council’s Director of Adult Services and Wellbeing, Iain Baines, said the council has worked with the Cedar Court Hotel chain to make its Ainley Top hotel available and has also struck a deal with the owners of a care home which was about to open before the pandemic developed, which can also be used for a specific purpose.

Mr Baines said the pandemic had meant extra levels of preparation – for example, 32 volunteers from his staff who have previous care experience are wanting to work in social care again during the crisis and a team are working with other care providers.

“We have been able to act as a sort of quasi-agency where they have got staff shortages,” he said.

Mr Baines said the partnership with Cedar Court would be used as space for people who were normally in receipt of care but this had broken down, for example if a family member had become unwell, who were not unwell or symptomatic themselves.

“We have set up a team from our own services with support to see if we could run somehwere that would be a place where people could go for a little while who were not ill themselves if we could get a level of care to them – it is a tribute to our professionals and Cedar Court,” he said.

Wayne Topley, Managing Director of Cedar Court Hotels, said they are “very happy and proud” to be supporting the council by providing temporary care for people whose usual care arrangements have temporarily broken down due to the impact of the coronavirus, or their usual carer is unwell.

“We had closed down all but one of our hotels in the group, however, when we got the call we quickly started to work on ways of making this happen to support the community.

“We were happy to unfurlough a number of key team members to re-purpose and reopen the facilities.

“As you can imagine, the hotel looks very different inside in terms of how we have changed the layout of the ground floor to support social distancing and our teams have been trained, following stringent measures, to ensure that they adhere to social distancing and a number of new processes have been developed to keep our hotel team and residents safe,” he said.

Mr Baines said the second arrangement whereby the council will lease the unopened care home space will again have an experienced team of staff present.

It will be a place where people who may have been in hospital and tested positive for COVID-19 – but are well enough to go home – can go if they are unable to be supported by their care home, so they can be supported until the care home can take them back, said Mr Baines.