Red Cross sent to help at Parkview Place care home in Winnipeg

The Red Cross has been deployed to help at a Winnipeg personal care home for the first time since the beginning of Manitoba's third wave of COVID-19.

A team has been there since May 14.

This is the first Red Cross team in a Winnipeg personal care home since the Red Cross concluded its work on Feb. 26 at Southeast Personal Care Home, said Jason Small, a Red Cross spokesperson.

Small said the team is providing additional personnel capacity within the home to help residents with daily life.

Members of the Red Cross have been working at Parkview Place in downtown Winnipeg because the care home is still trying to recruit and hire more health-care aides and nurses to work there, said a spokesperson with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority.

"The Red Cross was not deployed out of any dire staffing need at the site, but rather it was seen as a good interim fit for both the facility and the Red Cross, that would benefit the residents of Parkview Place," said the spokesperson in an email.

The care home is not in a COVID-19 outbreak. However, the Red Cross team may be redeployed to help out at other facilities if outbreaks do occur "to support in the same manner as it did throughout this past winter," the spokesperson said.