St. Christopher’s continues to take extensive steps to protect the health and safety of our residents, families, employees and visitors during the COVID-19 pandemic. To that end, we regularly update our response protocols in accordance with official recommendations from the New York State and Westchester County Health Departments, which are based upon close collaboration with and guidance from the CDC. We will keep you updated on this page, but meanwhile wanted to share some of the measures we have implemented to date. Stay healthy, stay safe.
COVID-19 RESPONSE PROTOCOL SNAPSHOT
- Communicating regularly with our stakeholders—including staff, residents and their families, Health Homes clients, Board of Directors, referral and regulatory bodies, etc.—concerning the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our campuses.
- Collaborating with our partner organization, the Greenburgh-North Castle Union Free School District, to share protocols and jointly prepare for outbreaks/sick youth, closures, etc.
- Encouraging staff, residents and their families to get vaccinated and boosted.
- Eliminating nonessential visits to campus and mandating daily (and more frequent, as needed) temperature screening for anyone on campus—including staff, residents and vendors—and asking screening questions. Individuals with a temperature reading greater than 99.9°F are not permitted to enter the campus and urged to contact their physician.
- Conducting regular health checks of each resident—including temperature screening—and instructing youth on ways they can increase the safety and cleanliness of their living and sleeping areas, and personal hygiene.
- Creating and activating a contact tracing protocol in the event of an infection, through which we contact all people who have had close contact with that the individual who tested positive so they can take action to protect themselves and those around them.
- Establishing quarantine settings on each campus for individuals who have been exposed to an infection to help mitigate the spread of the virus.
- Deep cleaning and disinfecting all surfaces in cottages, administrative buildings and all facilities, in addition to vehicles.
- Providing hand sanitizers and cleaning wipes throughout the campuses.
- Limiting the number of people who gather at one time in conference rooms and other communal areas—in addition to personal offices—and encouraging staff to communicate with colleagues by phone, email, messaging or video conference versus face-to-face meetings.
Earlier during the pandemic, we also: mandated the use of masks on campus; encouraged employees whose work did not require their presence on campus to work from home and provided the resources for them to do so; and stockpiled food, supplies, fuel, disinfection cleaners, sanitizer wipes, etc. in the event of significant shortages of these items—which occurred more frequently early on.
