Dear Friends of Windhorse Elder Care,

It’s Juneteenth, and we believe today should be a national holiday.  

On this incredibly important and historic day for our country, more than two years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation at the end of the Civil War, the enslaved people of Galveston, TX were freed at last.  We celebrate it as a day of progress, but there is a very long way to go in the journey to racial equity and true freedom in this country.  On this day, we as an organization are committing to doing better.  

We are taking action in the following ways:

-By clearly stating on our website and to our wider community that we stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality of the black community

-Adding additional race-specific diversity training as a requirement for all staff

-Offering ongoing resources for further personal education on inequality and systemic racism, and creating spaces for the uncomfortable conversations needed to grow in becoming more intentionally anti-racist. We are working on compiling an ever-growing library of resources on these topics that will be easily accessible through our website and internal web portals.

-Donating to causes that are supporting this movement and linking opportunities to staff to do the same

-Actively recruiting more BIPOC staff 

-Heightening our awareness day in and day out around inequities for BIPOC, and actively advocating for positive change and more race-specific issue awareness within our wider elder care community in Boulder

Please reach out to us with further ideas on how we can do better as a community.  We are fiercely committed to listening, learning, and growing.  We invite your voices and ideas and feedback. 

In humble solidarity,
Jyoti Sharp and the Windhorse Leadership Team

As the coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to have an impact on our communities, we feel it is important to share the steps we are taking to educate and support our clients’ and employees’ health and well-being.  Based on the guidance we have received from the state health agencies we have educated our staff on the many steps to take to prevent the virus, the procedure to take if one suspects they have the virus, and we have provided clear and direct recommendations when to stay home if one is experiencing symptoms of illness. In addition, we have encouraged the staff to complete the online course called the National COVID-Ready Caregiver Certification. This is a caregiver guide to practice updates, resources, and up to date information on how to keep themselves and those they care for safe. 

We are continuing to implement preventive practices and providing PPE supplies, such as soap, hand sanitizer, gloves, masks for our employees. In addition, we are conducting all of our meetings by teleconference and are encouraging our staff to engage in social distancing and limit their exposure as much as possible. We have reorganized our teams so that caregivers who are working in facilities remain working in only facilities and those working in people’s homes are just working in client’s homes.  We are also highly discouraging staff from traveling at this time. If they choose to travel, we are asking them to self- quarantine for 14 days afterward if they have virus symptoms. We are continuing to take this very seriously and are doing what we can to protect our clients and our staff.

We will continue to monitor this evolving situation. The health and safety of our clients and employees is a top priority. We care deeply for our clients, their families and our staff. We want everyone to stay safe during this time and we will do what we can to ensure that safety.

Visit this link to the CDC website that we have shared with our staff educating them on the coronavirus.