January 7, 2022
Dear St.Amant Families,
I have been overwhelmed by your support since our last message and the support that we have received from community members who heard that we have been incredibly challenged in our staffing. Thank you to everyone who reached out to me and to program areas directly. Your continued kindness and understand means so much.
I also want to share how grateful I am to all of our staff who have been managing their own wellness and their family’s wellness while working incredibly hard to fill the gaps in our staffing complement. Every person within this organization has pulled together to ensure that your family members have what they need and I’m incredibly thankful for the teams we have in all areas of our organization.
We officially declared a staffing emergency to our funder and the MGEU Support Union which gives us the ability to redirect non-union and MGEU Support staff as needed. At this time, we have not needed to activate an emergency within Health & Transition Services and the Manitoba Nurses Union.
Over this past week we were able to welcome many staff back to work as the isolation requirement changed from ten to five days. Currently we have 49 active cases of Covid-19 within our organization. Five cases in Autism Programs, 29 in Community Residential Programs, one in Community Services, one in Corporate Services, two in Finance, three in Human Resource Services, 15 in Health & Transition Services and two in Operations. As mentioned previously, we will only be reporting the numbers weekly to staff and families and only staff and family members of people who are considered a close contact will be notified of cases directly.
There is so much spread of COVID-19 in our community right now that we all need to practice precautions with every interaction. Our organization, where all staff are vaccinated and all staff are wearing PPE, is safer than our average outing or get-together.
Again, I want to thank each and every one of you for your ongoing support.
John Leggat
President & CEO
