Holiday Planning for Community Residences

Dear Family Members & Guardians,

Massachusetts continues to experience an unfortunate surge in positive cases throughout our local communities, as well as for most of the remainder of the United States at this time. Fidelity House CRC would like to continue to keep everyone as safe and clear from COVID as we possibly can. With that said, with the holidays quickly approaching we strongly feel that a change in our policy was necessary. Many people who live in a community residence are at a much higher risk of contracting the virus, especially those who are the most vulnerable and have existing underlying medical conditions.

Since we are experiencing an increase in COVID cases throughout our surrounding communities, we are making the difficult decision to extend our current hold on family visits until further notice. Effective Monday December 21^st, we will be cancelling/postponing all indoor, outdoor and any special visits outside of the home that were either pre-scheduled or in the process of being scheduled, until further notice. While these changes may create a sense of frustration for some, individuals we support included, keeping the people we support safe and in the clear from contracting COVID is our primary goal at this time. We feel it is necessary to make such changes to our existing policies in order to help reduce further exposure of the Coronavirus.

In conjunction with the CDC guidelines, the Department of Developmental Disabilities (DDS) and the Department of Public Health (DPH) we feel that we made appropriate changes to our policy in effort to keep everyone safe during the holiday season. Please see below:

Updated Visitation Guidelines:

• All FHCRC residential programs are within the red zone as determined by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, therefore all in-person and outside visits are restricted, until further notice.
• If a program is under quarantine due to a COVID positive case, all visits are automatically on hold until the full duration of the quarantine has ended and the hold on visits as such, is lifted.
• FHCRC will continue to reassess the visitation policy as needed.

I ask for your continued collaboration and understanding as we work together during these unprecedented times we are all living in. Given day to day changes that occur on a much grander level, FHCRC would have to make appropriate modifications to all of its policies as we need to adhere to state recommendations and regulations to ensure that we are staying current and enforcing the most updated information throughout the organization. If you have any questions please contact:

 Wanda Gomez, VP of Community Living, 1-978-382-2610

Meghan Fisk, Director of Nursing, 1-978-902-7072

Courtney Salerno, Clinical Director, 1-603-381-1462

Community Living Holiday Planning (2)