COVID-19 Archives

September 2, 2020

Caledonia Senior Living Family,

I am happy to report that as of today, September 2^nd, we continue to be COVID-free on our campus. We recently had one asymptomatic employee test positive who immediately quarantined at home for more than the CDC recommended timeframe. No one else in our community caught the virus due to our safety measures and vigilance. Gus, Chris and I, our Board of Governors and leadership team continue to be so proud and grateful to our entire team for their diligence and commitment to precautions and testing. To be sitting here in September and writing to you to say that we have not had one single employee or resident get sick with COVID-19 is simply incredible.

We are also grateful to all of you. This is an extremely difficult time for everyone and your confidence in us and respect for our safety protocol and guidelines helps us to focus on what matters most – caring for your loved ones and helping them to live their best lives possible. To our newest Caledonia families we recognize the immense leap of faith you have taken in choosing our community without ever having stepped inside our doors. To those of you who have been with throughout this pandemic – thank you for your patience and understanding and for continuing to trust us.

We have been enjoying the break from the heat and residents have been getting outside on our trishaw bikes and going for walks on campus. Now more than ever we are appreciating our beautiful grounds.  Scottish Home residents are enjoying some meals in our dining rooms at physically distanced “table for two’s and are doing small group activities together such as trivia, exercise and painting. The MacLean House residents just finished an incredible Monet inspired art project and are also working on restoring a coffee table! We have been safely moving in new residents over the summer and it’s wonderful to see new relationships forming.

We hope all of you will join us on Tuesday, September 15^th at 6:00pm for our next Family Town Hall discussion via Zoom. Please use this link for the meeting and please share with any other families.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85159133480?pwd=SkN5UEQzY0RqblowQjJCVVV6czlKdz09

The Meeting ID is 851 5913 3480
The Passcode is 635487

If you have a general question please reach out to us ahead of time so we can make sure to include it in our discussion.

We are thrilled to see so many families signing up for outdoor visits. New time slots open up every Monday between 5pm-8pm so please make sure to check each week as they have been filling up quickly. As a reminder, please be courteous of each other and sign up for one visit per week. If later in the week there are still time slots available you can reserve an additional visit. We are working on expanding our schedule to open up more days and time slots for families but we need to be able to staff it appropriately without compromising our resident programming. We will keep you posted! As always if our schedule doesn’t work for you, if you are coming from out of state to visit or your loved one has an upcoming special occasion such as a birthday or anniversary please reach out to Maria directly and we will do everything we can to accommodate your request.

A few families have reached out to us about window visits and MacLean House screened patio visits. This is another great option but please also coordinate your visit through Maria. For MacLean House screened patio visits we are only able to do them from the second floor and they should be coordinated directly with the household.

When visits are scheduled we can make sure staff can assist your loved one that the window or patio visit happens in a place that is safe for everyone and meets our safety guidelines and that you are screened in advance of your visit and upon arrival to our campus – both requirements of the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH). Please help us to comply with the IDPH requirements and make your visit a success. Please also remember we require masks to be worn during all visits wherever they happen on our campus.

Thanks again for cheering us on! Your support means the world to us. We hope to see all of you at our upcoming Zoom Family Town Hall!

Best,
Siân Stevens

August 20, 2020

Our family visits have been a great success. Thanks to everyone for following our guidelines to keep everyone safe and healthy.

The days for Outdoor Visits are: Thursdays, Saturdays and Tuesdays. New time slots will be posted each Monday for the following week. Each session will be a total of 30 minutes.

Please sign up at https://www.caledoniaseniorliving.org/visit/.

Please make your reservation at least 24 hours before you would like to visit. If you live in the same household, you can now both visit at the same time, limit two people of same household per session.

Guidelines for Outdoor Family Visits to Caledonia Senior Living

• We ask that you only reserve one time slot per resident.
• Visits must be limited to two visitors at a time, if within the same household, per resident.
• Social distancing of six feet or better must be maintained between the resident and all visitors.
• Visits must be limited to outdoors in the designated area only.
• Resident and visitors must wear a fresh mask provided by Caledonia Senior Living.
• Visitors will be screened upon arrival to campus including a temperature check.

Please be considerate of other residents and their families when signing up for visits. We have limited availability and want to make sure as many residents have a visitor as possible. If you are visiting from out of state or have another reason for needing special accommodations please reach out to us at info@caledoniaseniorliving.org and we will give you a call to see how we can help.

An updated informational flyer about how the visits will work can be found here. When you arrive please park toward the back of the Scottish Home near the MacLean House. You will see signs with arrows that will guide you to the Shetlands Garden. One family member is permitted at the check-in table with our dedicated staff member at any time so please wait outside of the Shetlands Garden gate until the check-in table is visitor free. Our team member will review the visit guidelines at this time and conduct the screening.

As always please reach out with any questions. We look forward to seeing you on campus!

July 16, 2020

Our first few weeks of family visits were a great success. Thanks to everyone for following our guidelines to keep everyone safe and healthy. The days for Outdoor Visits are: Thursdays, Saturdays and Tuesdays. New time slots will be posted each Monday for the following week. Each session will be a total of 30 minutes.

Please sign up at https://www.caledoniaseniorliving.org/visit/.

Please make your reservation at least 24 hours before you would like to visit. If you live in the same household, you can now both visit at the same time, limit two people of same household per session.

Guidelines for Outdoor Family Visits to Caledonia Senior Living

• We ask that you only reserve one time slot per resident.
• Visits must be limited to one visitor at a time per resident.
• Social distancing of six feet or better must be maintained between the resident and all visitors.
• Visits must be limited to outdoors in the designated area only.
• Resident and visitors must wear a fresh mask provided by Caledonia Senior Living.
• Visitors will be screened upon arrival to campus including a temperature check.

Please be considerate of other residents and their families when signing up for visits. We have limited availability and want to make sure as many residents have a visitor as possible. If you are visiting from out of state or have another reason for needing special accommodations please reach out to us at info@caledoniaseniorliving.org and we will give you a call to see how we can help.

An updated informational flyer about how the visits will work can be found here. When you arrive please park toward the back of the Scottish Home near the MacLean House. You will see signs with arrows that will guide you to the Shetlands Garden. One family member is permitted at the check-in table with our dedicated staff member at any time so please wait outside of the Shetlands Garden gate until the check-in table is visitor free. Our team member will review the visit guidelines at this time and conduct the screening.

As always please reach out with any questions. We look forward to seeing you on campus!

This weekend, we received the approval from Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) to begin family visits for all residents regardless of level of care.

We are so excited that residents will finally be able to reunite with their family members and close friends! It’s really happening!

These reunions are what have been keeping us going because we know that no matter how loving our team are no one can replace the connections they have with all of you.

Outdoor visits will begin on our campus starting Thursday of this week. Our first few days of visits will be a trial period so that we can learn from our experience and make any necessary adjustments to our precautions and logistics. IDPH’s announcement came with guidelines which we have incorporated into our plans. Our guidelines for this trial period are slightly different than IDPH’s because we feel at least initially we need to have even stronger precautions in place to ensure everyone’s health and safety. We are offering just one visit per family/friend during this trial period so that as many residents as possible can have a visitor. IDPH is requiring us to call visitors 24 hours before their visit so you must make your reservation at least 24 hours before you would like to visit.

You can sign up for visits for Thursday, Saturday or Tuesday here.

Guidelines for Outdoor Family Visits to Caledonia Senior Living

• Visits must be limited to one visitor at a time per resident.
• Social distancing of six feet or better must be maintained between the resident and all visitors.
• Visits must be limited to outdoors in the designated area only.
• Resident and visitors must wear a fresh mask provided by Caledonia Senior Living.
• Visitors will be screened upon arrival to campus including a temperature check.

An updated informational flyer about how the visits will work can be found here. When you arrive to our campus please park as close to the Red, Red Rose Garden as possible. You will see a tent adjacent to the garden. One family member is permitted in this tent with our dedicated staff member at any time so please wait in your car until the tent is visitor free. Our team member will review the visit guidelines at this time and conduct the screening.

As always please reach out with any questions. We look forward to seeing you on campus!

June 5, 2020

Ever since we first closed our doors in March we have been dreaming of and preparing for the moment when our doors could reopen and we could return to “normal”. What we know now is that as Illinois opens back up “normal” is still a long way off for us, and it will require our community be stronger than ever. Our reopening must be cautious and integrate with our continued robust testing so that as we move through each phase we can be as sure as possible that it is safe to do so.

Today, we are both happy and relieved to tell you that we still do not have any residents with COVID-19 and that no residents and staff have had symptoms of the virus during this pandemic. It’s because of the good health of our residents and staff that we are now are beginning to implement phase two of our five stage reopening plan. You can read our plan here. We will be hosting our third family Zoom Town Hall on Wednesday, June 10, 2020 at 6:30pm to answer questions but please don’t hesitate to reach out at any time.

We are excited that soon we will be able to start family visits as outlined in phase two of this plan and we will reach out to you when the logistics are in place to support safely implementing them. Visits will be able to be scheduled using the same online platform that we are currently using for video chats.

As always, thank you for your continued patience and support as we navigate this new stage of the COVID-19 crisis.

Zoom Town Hall Meeting Information
June 10, 2020
6:30pm
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81808489558?pwd=ejhycEttelFQTnpwbmxhcnFHOEx4QT09
Meeting ID: 818 0848 9558
Password: 342562

May 23, 2020

Last week we reached out to everyone letting them know we had a our first resident test positive. We are thrilled to report that after retesting the resident twice resulting in two negative tests they have now been classified as a “false positive” and have been able to return to their apartment. This means that we have not and do not have any COVID-19 resident cases on our campus. We have had some additional staff positive and those team members have also received negative test results when retested and they now have been tested a third time. As of today we only have one staff member out on leave that has what we believe to be a true positive. We are seeing a pattern of a handful of false positives each time we submit a large quantity of tests.

This week we hosted our second and largest Zoom Family Town Hall! Thanks for bearing with us while we navigated over 25 resident family members and 8 staff in attendance. We really appreciate the opportunity to connect with you and hear your questions. We will be sending out a short survey next week to capture any feedback or suggestions for our next call.

For those that weren’t able to attend here’s a quick recap. We talked about:

• Our continued and unwavering commitment to transparency. We want you to feel confident that you know how we are doing, what we are doing and that we are sharing the latest information with you.
• Our approach to aggressive testing – that at this time we are requiring all employees to be tested weekly and that we area also doing resident testing as needed.
• Our approach to sharing information with residents – in the beginning of the crisis we met with everyone in groups but now have been talking with residents individually when appropriate.
• Our Life Enrichment team has been keeping residents engaged as much as possible and trying to minimize the amount of time that residents have to watch the news about this crisis.
• We have worked hard to take a world that is not normal and keep it as normal as possible on our campus maintaining menus and activities that residents enjoyed before sheltering in place in their residences.
• We are rolling out a new reservations system on our website for video chats. The video chats will be initially available on Monday – Saturday due to staff availability to support the calls. Please call us with any questions. The new online reservation page functions similar to the one we trialed over Mother’s Day. It makes it much easier for our staff to manage the schedule. You can sign up for a video chat on our website at https://www.caledoniaseniorliving.org/scheduling/
• We are developing an opportunity for residents and family members to have socially distanced, in person visits using a barrier. We will be able to add those opportunities to our same online reservation calendar once the program is finalized.

Thanks again for all your support and faith in our team.

Schedule a Video Chat

May 19, 2020

Virtual Town Hall Meeting Tonight

Family members are invited to join us tonight for our virtual town hall meeting with Caledonia Senior Living & Memory Care’s leadership team.

Tuesday, May 19, 2020
6:00pm

May 13, 2020

As we mentioned in our last message we are committed to implementing both regular, routine staff testing and targeted testing on our campus.

That work began last week when we immediately retested staff that had tested positive and continued on Sunday and Monday when we retested the rest of the community including both residents and staff.

Honoring our pledge of transparency to staff, residents and families we will be updating you regularly on the results of our testing. Late last week we were able to pick up 1,000 COVID-19 tests from our Illinois Department of Public Health lab and we now have the supply to be able to move forward with our aggressive testing approach.

As of tonight we have received all the test results from this weekend’s resident testing and Monday’s staff testing. We can now provide you with an update on the retesting of the six staff that tested positive last week. Of the six staff only one tested positive again. The five that tested positive initially were either false positives or were people that had contracted the virus weeks ago and still had it in their system – our Medical Director has stated it can stay in your system for as long as eight weeks. Two of the team members were people that were previously quarantined due to possible exposure in April and it’s very possible that they tested positive due to the virus still being in their system weeks after the time they would have been contagious.  In addition to the one positive test that remains we did receive one additional positive result from a staff member whose test never came back during the initial testing. This staff member is also someone who was quarantined in April due to possible exposure. This team member and the other remaining positive team member are both still asymptomatic. They and the employees that have now tested negative are still at home as an extra precaution. We do not have any new positive staff cases based upon the new tests that were completed on Monday.

We have also already received all the results of the residents that were retested over the weekend. Unfortunately we received notice that one of our residents did test positive. The resident and their family have been notified and we are waiting for results of a retest that we completed immediately to determine if it is a false positive or not. We are very happy to report that the resident is asymptomatic and is in good spirits in our isolation wing. No other residents tested positive and no residents are displaying any symptoms. Our team did an incredible job of quickly getting the isolation processes and practices up and running while making sure that the resident is comfortable and feels loved and safe. As I write this message one of our team members is sitting outside their room reading to them. The resident will remain in isolation for fourteen days but will still receive loving care and attention from our team.

In sharing these results we are trying to balance transparency and giving you as much detail as possible while respecting the privacy of staff and residents. This makes the information perhaps a little harder to digest than if we could give you names and more specifics.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out if it’s unclear or if you have additional questions. To recap, our current and active positive test count is two employees and one resident. All three are asymptomatic. All prior positive staff are now negative and did not have any symptoms.

As we lean into the science of this situation to arm ourselves with the greatest amount of current and accurate information possible about the health of residents and staff on our campus we know these are not likely to be the only positive cases we will have during this pandemic.

Our hope is that by doing aggressive testing we will be able to identify any asymptomatic cases on our campus quickly – cases that otherwise would have gone undetected. We will continue to share this type of information with you moving forward.

Please know we have one singular goal during this time– to protect the residents and our team. This goal brings together staff, residents and families and we appreciate all the support and understanding you continue to display. It’s your support along with the love we have for residents and our community that keep us going and fighting hard against this terrible virus.

May 8, 2020

The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) recently announced that they would begin testing all communities that don’t have cases of COVID-19 and we decided to proactively implement that testing ourselves to avoid bringing additional people to our campus and get information as soon possible. On Monday we tested our entire community of residents, staff and agency staff. It was mandatory for all staff to participate. At the time of our testing and as of today we still do not have any staff or residents with symptoms of COVID-19.

As of this afternoon, all our test results have come back except for three and we are tremendously relieved to tell you that no residents have tested positive. We should note that there were a couple of residents whose sample size was too small and we are waiting for results from new tests that were conducted yesterday.

Unfortunately six of our team members tested positive. All six are asymptomatic and both they and we were surprised by the results. There was no reason to suspect that they would be positive and as you are probably aware we have taken every precaution currently available to identify anyone that may have contracted the virus. While we cannot share the names of our team members that tested positive we can share with you that they are not all in one department or clustered together in any way.

We are working closely and diligently with IDPH and our Medical Director to contain the virus. We immediately took the following steps:

• All employees who tested positive and were on campus were immediately re-tested to rule out false positives. On Monday we used two different types of tests both provided by IDPH and it should be noted that all the positive results were the same type of test.
• All employees who tested positive were sent home and will remain there for 7 days. When they return they will be required to wear an N-95 mask until further direction from our Medical Director.
• We notified resident Power of Attorneys and our staff.
• We have scheduled a second test for all staff and residents for Monday, May 11th. Our staff “drive thru testing” will be open from 9:30-2:30.

Our goal moving forward is to establish the most aggressive testing regime possible. We have already reached out to IDPH to better understand what is possible in terms of the amount of tests we can expect to receive on an ongoing basis and will report back to you all when we have a finalized plan.

While this is not the outcome we had hoped for we are grateful that we had the opportunity to proactively test our community and identify these asymptomatic cases. As you know we have put all the precautions and screenings possible in place on our campus to keep the virus out and keep everyone healthy and this information will help inform additional policies to further these efforts.

We are committed to doing everything that is required to protect the residents and staff who are not diagnosed with COVID-19 as well as making sure our staff that tested positive get the care they need should they develop symptoms. We continue to act with extreme caution, reinforcing the procedures we have in place and will continue to update you with any new information.

As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or concerns.

Thank you for your understanding and support. It has lifted us up during this time.

We have scheduled our next Zoom Family Town Hall for Tuesday 19th at 6pm. The Zoom link is here. We do hope you’ll join us. Please share the link with any other family members who would like to participate.

Meeting ID: 884 6928 8654
Password: 166161

Mother’s Day 2020

Mother’s Day is one of our favorite days all year at Caledonia Senior Living.

Many of you have joined us in past years for our special Mother’s Day tea. It’s always wonderful to celebrate all the incredible mothers in our Caledonia Senior Living family.

This year it is even more important than ever that we make this a great day for your loved ones. We know many of them will be missing their families and own traditions and remembering their mothers on this day.

While we can’t welcome all of you to our campus we wanted to share with you our celebration plans and invite you to help make the day special.

In the morning and immediately following lunch we will be hosting video chats for Scottish Home residents with their families. While we normally offer a variety of different applications for video conversations because of the anticipated volume of calls we are exclusively offering Google Duo calls on Mother’s Day. If you haven’t used Duo yet it is very easy and can be accessed on a computer with a camera as well as most cell phones and tablets. Instructions for Google Duo can be found here. MacLean House families can sign up for video chats by simply calling the MacLean House directly.

In the afternoon we will be bringing our Mother’s Day tea experience to residents in their individual apartments and rooms. Our tea cart will bring some of the same high tea delights that we typically serve at our event. As a special treat we will share a personal message for residents from Chef Gary Maclean, national chef of Scotland. One of our treats will be prepared from his recipe which he is giving to us in honor of the day and as a gift to residents. Chef is not the only special virtual guest we will host. While your loved ones are enjoying their tea they will be able to watch 9 short performances by the Civic Orchestra’s Negaunee Fellows – you may recall they have visited our campus for the last few years sharing resident stories through music. We are also finalizing plans for a very special musician and friend of our organization to perform live at the end of the tea.

We have a wonderful opportunity to provide custom family puzzles to residents as a small token from us to celebrate the weekend. These puzzles will be created using treasured family photos. If you would like your loved one to be included please send us photos by Friday, May 1^st. We will be ordering daily as we receive photos so please send as soon as you can. You can e-mail your photos to sianstevens@caledoniaseniorliving.org.

Thank you to all of you who participated in our first ever Virtual Town Hall meeting. We loved seeing so many of you and having the opportunity to answer questions. We hope to host another call in the next few weeks.

Thanks in advance for your help with our Mother’s Day celebration!

We look forward to celebrating in person next year.

April 25, 2020

Today ends National Volunteer Week across the country when we recognize the impact of volunteers and the incredible power of volunteer service.

Here at Caledonia Senior Living and Memory Care our volunteers enable us to bring enriching programs and companionship to the residents we serve throughout the year. Volunteers help support the important values of home and family that guide us.

While COVID-19 has changed many things in how we are delivering services to residents–and we are missing our wonderful volunteers being on campus–our volunteers are doing more than ever. In fact, our volunteer community is growing by leaps and bounds. That’s why I am so pleased to have the opportunity to reach out to say THANK YOU to the families of our current and former residents, our neighbors, local business leaders and the greater Chicago Scots community.

Despite the lockdown your acts of kindness are getting through our closed doors and bring love into our community! You are making an important difference!

Thank you to everyone who is lending their time, talent, and support to improve the quality of life for residents, caregivers, and every essential worker at Caledonia Senior Living during this difficult time. You are easing the burden in ways that count. You are all exemplary volunteers!

We’ve received nearly 100 cards and letters of encouragement for residents and staff. Everyone’s well wishes have really buoyed spirits. If you’d like to write to someone, contact dawnmiller@chicagoscots.org to get connected.  Our critical Personal Protective Equipment supply has grown thanks to volunteers who have sewed and donated face masks, helped us source gowns, face shields and hand sanitizer to meet our needs. Last week you answered our request for thermometers and blood pressure cuffs and we now have the desired allotment on its way.

A big game changer for us has been donated technology.  With residents sheltering in place in their rooms we have had to quickly shift the way we provide most of our services and recreational activities.  A 65″ smart TV, Apple TV and a handful of iPads and Kindles – all gifts – are allowing us to both provide exceptional new virtual programs to residents in their apartments and rooms as well as help keep residents connected to their families through staff-facilitated video chats. Chicago actors are volunteering to call our new weekly “Celebrity Bingo” games via Face Time streamed into resident rooms and we have a growing list of global entertainers committing to volunteer performances for residents.

Donate Now

I am especially grateful to share what we are doing for our essential workers – our own Caledonia Senior Living Heroes. This weekend every employee will benefit from our first Employee Food Pantry. We have distributed 110 bags filled with nonperishable food items and personal items to thank our incredible team members for their commitment and help support their families. Every day, without fanfare, our heroes deliver remarkable care and kindness. We are also bringing in hot meals and treats from local restaurants every week for all employees. Please reach out to me directly to participate in the food pantry or to help treat our team to a meal. I can be reached at sianstevens@caledoniaseniorliving.org.

From now until April 30^th you can show your Caledonian Heart by purchasing our special t-shirt, featuring a design of Scottish hero, King Robert the Bruce, by renowned artist David Lee Cscsko. All proceeds support the heroes of Caledonia Senior Living and our COVID-19 relief efforts. T-shirts will ship in May and I would love to see photos of them being worn across Chicagoland and around the world cheering on our team and residents.

You are the champions of this new world of volunteerism. Thank you for showing the depth of the human spirit. Please keep it up. Every message of encouragement you send, every gift you make online and every donation of time and talent will help get us through this and keep our Caledonia Senior Living family feeling loved and supported.

Thank you again for being a volunteer champion for Chicago Scots.

Sincerely,
Siân Stevens
Chief Operating Officer

April 15, 2020

Caledonia Senior Living Family,

April 9, 2020

As of today, we are happy to report that we do not have any positive cases of COVID-19 at our community including residents and staff. We are thankful both for our good fortune and the incredible efforts of our team.

We challenge ourselves daily by asking what else can we do to keep everyone safe, healthy, engaged and feeling appreciated. We continue to review the latest information and adjust our policies and processes accordingly.

We have a couple of changes that we want to make you aware of:

1). We are now providing in-room dining and individual activities to all skilled nursing and intermediate care residents. This decision was based upon new requirements from the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH).

Sheltered Care residents currently have the choice of in-room dining or eating together – socially distanced in the dining room but we are prepared to change our dining program there at a moment’s notice. Last week we purchased all the equipment that will enable us to safely provide in-room dining in Sheltered Care should we have the need to do so and all of that equipment has now been assembled and sanitized.

2). Following IDPH’s guidelines about essential workers our accounting department is now working remotely. As a result statements are going out a few days late. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your understanding while we get new systems in place.

3). A few families have asked to have “window meetings” with their loved ones. While we are happy to facilitate these occasional meetings please make sure to schedule with our receptionist in advance so that we can find a safe way to make this possible and be available to assist. Now that the weather is warmer and our windows are often open please remember that there needs to be glass between you and your loved one.

We ask for continued support and patience with our no visitor policy – it is for the safety of all our residents and staff and it’s critical that we all continue to use great caution.

4). Yesterday we were able to obtain 200 COVID-19 test kits as a result of a professional connection. We are incredibly fortunate to have these tests. What does this mean for us? We still need a doctor’s order to complete a test on behalf of a resident or employee and it will need to be taken to the lab for processing but having our own tests should enable us to potentially test someone in the future if they have mild symptoms and don’t need hospital care – and help us keep residents out of the hospital that don’t need to be there. We are hopeful that we will be able to get results faster but as the tests just arrived yesterday we are still learning the details.

A Special Performance For Our Residents

Yesterday we were touched by the performance of 3 socially distanced Thistle and Heather Highland Dancers and one bagpiper in our courtyard. We assisted residents to their windows to watch and listen and it was an incredible moment of love, joy and community. These volunteers are planning on performing once a week from the safety of outside the community. You can watch the video here.

April 5, 2020

Many of you have reached out to see how you can help support our amazing heroes — our team of caregivers, nurses, dining, housekeeping and laundry staff and other essential workers.

March 25, 2020

During this incredibly difficult time we are committed to not just an abundance of caution but an abundance of empathy for residents, their loved ones and our staff.

Our commitment to an abundance of caution drives us to make sure that we are not only following recommendations and guidelines from the CDC and IDPH, but constantly evaluating what else can be done to protect everyone within our community. This means residents and staff are living and working on a campus where change is much more frequent than ever before, and we are committed to being transparent with everyone as we implement those changes updating you as close to real time as possible without compromising our ability to respond to any recommendations nimbly. Our commitment to an abundance of empathy ensures that we think through each recommendation and guideline with consideration to all the implications for residents, staff and families. We want to make sure that we are thoughtful as to the potential impact on an individual’s emotional well-being as well physical health and safety.

Today and tomorrow we are getting ready to welcome three of our residents back home to our campus. These individuals have been away at local hospitals for reasons unrelated to the virus. None of these residents are displaying any symptoms of COVID-19 but they will be sheltering in place in isolation for 14 days as a precaution before returning to their permanent residences on our campus. In preparation for their homecoming, we made the decision to vacate the McMillan wing for the purpose of their isolation. While we would prefer not to uproot McMillan residents and relocate them it became very clear to us that it would provide the most protection for the other residents and staff on our campus to be able to use McMillan as a dedicated isolation wing – especially given it its location away from other parts of our campus. By the end of the day tomorrow all McMillan residents will have been moved temporarily to the Georgeson wing or Sheltered Care. All families were contacted yesterday and today before we started moving residents. Today we also held town hall discussions with our staff so that they are ready to care for the 3 residents on isolation. 

Another big change for our campus is even further reducing the number of people that come here every day. At this time, only “essential employees” are on campus and all others are working remotely. We have also split our senior leadership team so that two are working remotely and two are on campus.  It’s a time for contingency plans and this is part of our plan to make sure that there is always leadership available for residents and staff. We have a much more extensive questionnaire that the few remaining visitors and all staff and agency staff are completing every day as well as multiple temperature checks. One of the biggest changes for residents is that effective immediately we won’t be able to provide beauty shop services as that position is now considered non-essential and can’t be done with social distancing. We know that many residents really enjoy their hair appointments and it saddens us to have to make this decision.  We look forward to everyone getting a new hair-do when our community reopens again.

In the last couple of days we have received new guidelines for how we provide meal service and we have had a lot of conversations to determine how we can provide the required significant social distancing while fulfilling the need for companionship. In Sheltered Care, residents are now dining with just one other person at their table and in Skilled Nursing we have created smaller dining environments with again just two people at a table utilizing some of the little sitting nooks in the hallways to reduce the number of people eating in the dining room. We are also continuing to provide meals to those who would prefer to eat in their rooms.

We are now quarantining incoming mail, packages and dropped off supplies from loved ones for three days so please allow for that timing if you are planning on bringing or sending things. If there is an urgent need please call reception first and we will accommodate. By allowing items to be “quarantined” for three days we eliminate the need for us to use supplies and staff time to spray everything down.

While we still welcome dropped off treats for loved ones and staff at this time we have to require that only restaurant prepared hot food items or non-perishable, packaged, store-bought goods can be brought in.

Many of you have reached out to video chat with your loved one and we welcome that!  If you are interested in video chatting, please call the receptionist for The Scottish Home or the MacLean House directly for those residents and let them know some times of day that work best for you and we will do our best to accommodate. We are currently using FaceTime and Facebook Messenger. To find us on Facebook Messenger please look for the contact Caledonia LifeEnrichment and send us a message first. We are looking into adding other programs too. We are in need of a couple more iPads specifically for the Scottish Home. If you have an old one that you are willing to donate please let us know – it will only be used for these type of calls.

Many of you have so kindly asked us how you can help during this difficult time. We will be sending out another message in the next day or two to all families and Chicago Scots members with some suggestions but for now please know your understanding, your compliance with the difficult rules we have had to put in place and your positive thoughts are a tremendous help to us. We understand how difficult it is for you to not see your loved ones and to trust us to continue to provide the care they need and we look forward to the day we can welcome everyone back to our campus.

March 17, 2020

Today we were heartbroken to learn of the 22 cases of COVID-19 at a nursing home and short-term rehab in Willowbrook. When another organization struggles or experiences a tragedy like this within our community of providers, we are deeply impacted. Tonight our hearts are with the residents, staff and families of that community.

We want to reassure you that after learning of this news we immediately contacted our staff and we were able to confirm that none of our staff and agency support have been working at that community as well as ours. We were also able to confirm that we have not had any recent move-ins from that community and that our marketing staff have not visited prospective residents there.

We also wanted to remind you that we truly doing everything we can to keep residents and staff safe and happy during this difficult time. Some examples of what we are doing to get the very latest information are as follows:

• We continue to monitor the COVID-19 situation daily and implement quick changes to follow the latest guidelines and information.  If there are lessons to be learned from Willowbrook we will find out and incorporate those learnings into our plans.
• We check the recommendations of Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) and the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) on a daily basis and watch IDPH’s daily press conferences.
• We are participating in weekly conversations with other communities that are members of our state association LeadingAge as well as having several conversations each week with the senior leadership teams of other senior living providers in our area to share ideas and support each other.

Each day our staff are coming in and working harder than ever with so much love for the residents.  We couldn’t be prouder of our team who are meeting these challenging times with a positive attitude, thoughtful responses and putting residents needs before their own.

A few changes that are new this week:

• We have had to make some modifications to our residents receive meals on our campus to meet new recommendations from IDPH.  We are now separating staff meals from resident meals and have reduced the number of people dining together and their proximity to each other.
• We have made some modifications to our resident programming in order to comply with new requirements to reduce the size of our gatherings and proximity of residents to each other.  For example, today our St Patrick’s Day Party became four small, separate celebrations instead of one big party and we are focusing on providing activities that allow people to be seated further away from each other than they normally would.
• We have increased the frequency of temperature checks for all employees and residents.
• We have asked non-essential employees to work from home for the foreseeable future to further reduce the number of people on our campus.  
• We are continuing to keep the community closed to visitors to significantly limit the number of people on our campus.
• We have developed a password protected web page where our staff will be posting regular resident photos.   You will receive a password in your e-mail tomorrow.  Please call us if you don’t get the message.
• We have written a letter to our governor and are working to obtain additional supplies from the state government as well as the ability to get tests for staff.

Thank you to all of you for your support.  As always, please feel free to reach out to us with questions.

March 14, 2020

Today we received additional recommendations from the Illinois Department of Public Health and our own Medical Director.

As a result, we have made the following changes:

• Effectively immediately we are limiting residents from leaving the campus other than from necessary medical appointments.
• We have increased the monitoring of residents’ temperatures from daily to multiple times per day.

Please know that we are only making these changes because we believe they are necessary. Our highest priority remains to protect the health and safety of those who live, visit or work here.

We know this is a difficult time for everyone and that many of you are missing seeing your loved ones. We are developing a password protected web page where our staff will be regularly posting resident photos so you can see them.

If you have not given us permission to use your family member or friend’s photo but would like them to be included you can do so by having the Power of Attorney send us permission at info@caledoniaseniorliving.org.

Any updates will continued to be posted here. Thanks again for all your understanding during this challenging time.

March 12, 2020

Due to the progression of the COVID-19 virus in Illinois we are temporarily not allowing visitors on our campus.

This decision was not made lightly but with guidance from the Illinois Department of Public Health and our deepest concern for your loved ones well-being.

We know these changes may inconvenient or upset some of you. For this we apologize.  Our highest priorities are the health and safety of everyone who lives, visits or works at Caledonia Senior Living and Memory Care.

If you have questions or want to see if an exception can be made due to your loved one’s health status please feel free to contact Reception at 708-447-5092 and they will direct your call.  We will be continuing to update this site with the latest information.

Resident Photos

With social distancing measures in place, we want to make sure friends and family can see how their family members at Caledonia Senior Living & Memory Care are doing.

We have setup a password protected page with resident photos which we plan to update throughout the duration of the COVID-19 situation. While we know it’s not the same as a personal visit, we hope seeing photos of your family members and friends helps during this time. 

Please visit https://www.caledoniaseniorliving.org/family/ to view the photos. If you need the password, please email us at info@caledoniaseniorliving.org