Friends, Families and Supporters:
I hope you’ll forgive me being a bit of a
nudnik
at the start of this week’s announcements—we want to encourage you to, if you’ve not already, please take ten minutes to share your thoughts with us on concerns, worries and ideas regarding COVID-19 and JFGH’s process of recovery and re-engagement. We invite family members to take a survey that can be found
here
. We also invite all of the people we support to take a different survey found
here
.
Okay, with that out of the way (thanks, as ever, for you indulgence!), I’m happy to bring you some updates and information.
This week brought the thrilling finish to our first-ever
JFGH Virtual Garden Contest
! People we support and our DSPs were invited to create gardens—flowers, succulents, vegetables or all of the above—at their homes or in any of the garden beds at any of our office/MOST locations, on patios in containers, or inside in containers. The idea was to focus on our uniquely human capacity to create beauty, to get outside for some fresh air, to bring us together as an extended JFGH family. And, what fun we’ve had! Visit our
Facebook page
in the days to come to view beautiful photos and videos. In all, 24 different teams took the challenge. And, the world is that much prettier as a result. At a time when our focus is on so much in the world that worries us, that causes us anxiety, how lovely that we are afforded a brief chance to laugh and to smile, to enjoy the (nearly literal) fruits of our work. That is a gift for which I am so thankful to the extraordinary people we support and our DSPs and staff.
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It’s also worth celebrating that we’ve just passed our seventh week COVID-19 free. As you know, our first exposure was as far back as 5 March—an age ago—and our first confirmed case was 6 April. Over the ensuing six weeks, we were living moment to moment in extraordinary circumstances. And yet here we are, as we move into July, and we are infection free and doing everything in our power to keep it that way. As we watch in dismay the new outbreaks and massive increases in infection rates in more than half the states in the US, including Maryland and Virginia, we pause to appreciate where we’ve come and to re-commit to taking every step we can to keep people we support, our staff and volunteers, and all of our community safe and healthy.
Please note our re-opening plan is in its final approval stage and will be made public soon.
Last Friday, we welcomed the first family visits with folks we support in a long time. As a reminder, the guidelines for these visits must be followed, and I’m afraid there cannot be exceptions. Most simply put, the stakes are too high. So, I urge you to carefully review the following requirements, which cannot be waived.
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Finally, I'll be live next Thursday, 9 July, on
Facebook
at 11am EST providing our weekly update. As always, I encourage you to share your questions, and I will answer as completely as possible.
Have a safe and happy 4th of July weekend!
Stay safe. Stay well. Stay healthy.
We got this.
David
David Ervin, JFGH CEO, dervin@jfgh.org
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