Q&A


TCHE: How will Covid-19 change the design of your care homes?


Goyal: We are looking at that, and what others are doing. Some of the things we are looking at are to do with smaller households because that fits in very nicely with the dementia model of care. The challenge is there is always a trade-off: non-Covid times require a different design to Covid times. The things that worked during Covid do not work quite as effectively in normal times. You would be requiring a pandemic every year to make those things work. The key is flexibility and the ability to switch things on and off, as of when you need them.


TCHE: What do you mean by breaking things down into smaller households?


Goyal: Smaller households means being able to break down the house into smaller sections for infection control. It’s things like outdoor access, so that you can segregate areas when you need to contain an infection. If there is an infection outbreak in one area, you can still access other areas without walking through one into the other, so you can rely on different means of access. It also means creating indoor pods, so the moment there is a problem you can create a separation straightaway and continue visiting without spending weeks ordering new equipment. It would already be there - you just literally swing glass partitions into place.


Or it could be technology to check temperatures as people walk through the door unobtrusively rather than sticking a thermometer at their forehead. Or it could be isolation areas where people can be checked and put-on PPE. Who knows what the future holds?


We have set ourselves a challenge, or target, around how you occupy someone for 10-16 hours a day meaningfully… we have a raft of plans around that where we really want to be innovative


There could be sanitisation units, tunnels that you can go through that cleanse shoes and clothes. There are lots of things on the market like air purification, which is used on aeroplanes. We are looking at ways we can investigate how clean the air actually is.


There are many other considerations like infection plates to kill Covid, to handles and surfaces for example. The key thing is there’s going to be another virus around the corner. I think we are better equipped to deal with it now.


TCHE:Do you look at this internally with your design team or do use external people?


Goyal: We have an in-house design team, and our head of innovation, Claire Johnsen has also been busy looking at new ideas and technology we can incorporate into our current and future builds. We ran a company-wide innovation challenge this year. We received 269 ideas, many of which we are taking forward, and these range from small ideas to quite large ones. We are always looking for innovation to come from within the company as well as from the outside.


We are also trying to promote collaborative working with other organisations including universities. Our


Hallmark Care Homes Foundation, which is in its early stages, will also create links with research work to advance social care progress.


TCHE: What are your plans for refurbishment of your existing care homes?


Goyal: Our care homes are always built and kept to the highest standard; we don’t wait until the home starts to fall apart until we refurbish. Because we are building new homes, the homes in our existing portfolio can look aged earlier and we are mindful of this.


The pandemic hasn’t helped, we have had to slow our refurbishment programme because access for our contractors has been diminished. But as soon as we are out of this pandemic then we will recommence our refurbishments with the aim of keeping our portfolio of homes up to a really high standard.


TCHE: In light of Covid-19, will you be refurbishing existing homes to make them more pandemic resilient?


Goyal:. There will be a review at the end of the pandemic to see what the lessons learned are both internally and within the social care sector. Then we will make decisions on whether further changes need to be made though, things like the visiting rooms and outside pods have already been installed


TCHE:Does Savista Developments plan to build homes for other care providers?


Goyal: We may do that in future but with our expansion plans and going into care villages with the Santhem Residences brand, my guess is that we are going to keep Savista very busy over the next few years. Savista was created, initially, so that we could ensure the financial success of our new build projects. There is no guarantee that a builder will not go bust. We had that experience a number of years ago – that was very costly and stressful – so we decided to


January 2021 • www.thecarehomeenvironment.com 15


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54