ipac Services, Hospice Dufferin, Choices Youth Shelter, Oliver House and others.
While Infection Prevention and Control—or IPAC—may have felt like the buzzword for the last two years, it has been a consistent part of our work since the inception of FTP over 36 years ago. As a congregate living setting, we have a particular and strict set of guidelines (from both our ministry and local public health unit) that we must provide services and support within. These guidelines include reporting and managing the outbreak of infectious and contagious diseases, which our unique settings are at a higher risk of experiencing. Although we were as surprised as the rest of the world, we responded quickly and decisively when the pandemic was declared by the World Health Organization in March 2020. Since then, our staff and clients have been continuously adapting to enhanced precautions, guidance and mandates from the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services (MCCSS) and Wellington-DufferinGuelph Public Health. Early on in the pandemic, FTP was grateful to receive increased funding from MCCSS to take on additional IPAC responsibilities for our community and the Violence Against Women (VAW) sector. We were one of two VAW organizations designated as IPAC co-champions. Together with one of our sister agencies—Halton Women’s Place—we acted as a central resource and as advocates, and chaired our sector and regions’ Community of Practices on IPAC response and recovery. Additionally, as co-champions with our local partner— Community Living Dufferin (CLD)—we supported other area agencies including Dufferin Child and Family 10
Together with Halton Women’s Place and CLD, we developed and distributed new policies including our Vaccination, Personal Protective Equipment, Rapid Antigen Testing, N95 Respirator and Outbreak Management policies. We designed and implemented a central rapid antigen testing clinic and created several unique, accessible visual and video resources for staff and clients. We developed a personal protective equipment (PPE) inventory sharing and ordering model, and continue to manage the inventory and ordering of PPE for our respective agencies, oftentimes sharing PPE with agencies in need. Internally at FTP, we prepared for and managed all IPAC and PPE controls and concerns—including public health assessments—and were happy to receive two outstanding inspection reports with little room for improvement identified in either. Throughout our long history, one thing has remained consistent, despite changing governments and directives, and that is our focus on the health and safety of the individuals and families we support. Thanks to our rapid response to convert the shelter to individual units, and to the diligence of our staff around standards for cleanliness, preparedness and adherence to all IPAC protocols, we have weathered the pandemic as well as possible, having only one “suspected” outbreak throughout the entire duration of the pandemic, to-date. Whether we are following daily symptom and contact screening, completing rapid antigen tests every 48 hours, wearing masks for entire shifts, taking the time to screen, test and track each and every individual and visitor coming in to our buildings, or isolating for 10 days with any suspected exposure to the virus—we continue to offer Safety, Support and Hope, in the best way we can, to anyone who needs it. We reflect with gratitude on the lessons learned about responsibility, resilience and resolve we’ve had the opportunity to benefit from, while maintaining our commitment to our deep-rooted agency values.
