Isabelle Devillier, executive of kindness
Get up, have coffee, have lunch, go shopping, and always have that thought that keeps coming back. “Is there one more today ? How are they doing ?”. That we have a close one touched. Whether or not it was Covid-19, it became a reality. Isabelle Devillers, director of a nursing home of the Red Cross of Marseille, delivers in this fourth episode of Clichés, her questions, the difficult decision she had to make and the reflections she had to go through during this crisis. Her main mission is to manage its establishment of 105 residents and 50 employees.
On March 7, the French government advised against any visit to the nursing home. Isabelle Devillers was faced with a dilemma. Closing the centre means cutting off all contact between residents and their families. But leaving it open means risking the live of her residents. “I said “we’re closing”. It was very hard because the families fall upon me “what does that mean, it’s a scandal” way. But I was firmly convinced that if there was a government directive that told us “strongly discouraged” it was because something big was happening”. (2’10)
Overnight, with Covid-19, the situation is changing quickly. To ensure she follows government actions and changes in her institution, Isabelle Devillers created a group of shared messages with her team. It allows staff to come together and share their concerns. “For us, the institution, and for me, as a person, the announcement of the first case of Covid, I must confess that it was a moment in my absolutely indescribable personal life. it’s a panic, really. I told myself how I was going to do… There were anxieties that were terrible and I had to answer them, I had to be both pedagogue, but also firm on my position. It was special. I had to have this directing posture, this accompanying posture, this listening posture and be with them.” (6’50)
To break their isolation, an animator films seniors and sends daily videos to families. “She filmed some pretty incredible moments… She used to make them sing a sentence of a song each in turn, and I confess that when I looked at it at home at night, I cried like a noodle in front of my computer because I thought it was super moving. I said to myself, “they are confined, they have cognitive problems and they are singing Mon Amant de Saint-Jean and it is perfectly in place.” (11’54)
Isabelle Devilliers and her team continue to “keep the fort”, the nickname of the institution that began during the crisis. At the French scale, they are nearly 1900 people to take care of the elderly in the 32 nursing home of the French Red Cross.