It was only after the 2020 peak of the pandemic that care home manager Mira Stamatova could properly contemplate the enormity of what she, her staff and residents at Jewish Care’s Otto Schiff home in Golders Green had experienced.

Sitting down with a counsellor as part of support sessions arranged for employees, the 50-year-old “bawled my way through two thirds of it. I didn’t realise how affected I was until I had my first reflection session. I think I scared the person I was talking to.”

In a candid account of life for front-line care workers over the past two years, Bulgarian-born Ms Stamatova told the JC that some memories of events at Otto Schiff — which specialises in caring for those with dementia — were particularly heart-rending.

One had been arranging the funeral of a male resident early in the pandemic.

“The burial society were not able to answer us for more than 12 hours,” she recalled. “We were calling them all through the night on the hour.

“When we finally arranged it with someone else, they said ‘we will be with you but we have 12 burials before 12 o’clock’.”

For her and her colleagues, opening up about what they had been through was difficult because at the time, it had “felt matter-of-fact, like this is just what we had to do. I suppose that approach helped at the beginning because it would have been too hard to deal with the full horror of what was happening.

“We just had to take it a day at a time and not get ourselves lost in the enormity of what was going on.”

She paid tribute to the many staff members who had made huge personal sacrifices to protect Otto Schiff residents.

“I had colleagues who at the beginning did not share with their families that they were working with people with Covid because they were afraid that family would stop them coming to work.

“I could not even imagine going through concerns about your own wellbeing and what might happen at home and not being able to share that.”

The health and safety challenges for staff were eased by the knowledge that sufficient PPE supplies had been secured.

“The preparation was very important to us. We started to plan very early. We were very lucky stock-wise.”

Coming to terms with the prospect of losing residents suddenly through Covid was immensely difficult.

Unlike some care providers, Otto Schiff never stopped end-of-life visiting.

However, Ms Stamatova recalled one case where a resident “had deteriorated so quickly his family couldn’t get here in time so our carers had his daughters on the phone so they could talk to him in his last moments.

“This is not something that leaves you. Someone is dying and you are the intermediary to make sure that communication happens. One of the daughters was singing to her dad.

“The psychological side of it you can’t describe. It is not because your vocabulary is awful but because human beings have not had to deal with something so dramatic going on before.
“For me, the most difficult thing about it was that it was so quietly tragic.”

The North Finchley resident had to adapt quickly to deal with the fast-changing government guidance as Covid ripped through care establishments.

It helped that Jewish Care had acted early and “closed doors to visitors before government guidelines suggested it. It doesn’t sound great but at the time it was so necessary.

“It was our responsibility to make sure that the connection between the residents and the families was there and kept intact so people could still be part of each other’s lives.”

But that was more complicated for the residents with dementia. “Suddenly they see this little tablet and only hear the voice of their loved one.”

Some residents “couldn’t put the image of the person together with the voice they were hearing”.

Things were “not as distressing” after visitors returned but there was an impact on residents’ mental health and cognitive ability, with some not being able to recognise their relatives.

“The first couple of visits were heart-breaking. Sometimes with dementia the words are not everything. It is the way they look at you and smile or not.

“We had one lady who was particularly close with her daughters. She would FaceTime every day but when it came to face-to-face interaction, she couldn’t put the face together with the people that she loves. That is very hard and it was why it was important to take that reintroduction slowly.”

Keeping to a routine was crucial to creating a sense of calm and familiarity for residents, despite the lack of variety in human contact.

“I remember the first Passover. We were having an outbreak and had to quarantine everyone in their rooms.

“The Seder night is such a huge event. Even if they don’t remember what Passover is, the sheer familiarity of the service gives that warm feeling.

“Having to create that in isolation with care staff running from room to room and trying to get all the sequences together was very challenging.”

Welcome support had been provided by redeployed Jewish Care staff unable to work from offices who helped with FaceTime and other social contact. The understanding of families had also been vital.

“We didn’t have undue pressure from relatives. They understood and they helped. They were with us all the way.”

For Ms Stamatova, who has been with Otto Schiff since 2017, a “light at the end of the tunnel moment” was the invitation for her first vaccination.

“I was on my way to work on bus number 13 and I was sent the link to book my vaccine. I booked it that evening at the Royal Free. That was great. It felt like I had something positive I could finally do.”

And the lessons learned during the first phase of the pandemic had made it easier to cope with care during the Delta and Omicron variants.

“We all have a sense of personal responsibility. We all do what we can.”