the times | Saturday November 14 2020 1GM 35
Comment
Care home visits are a basic human right
The rules dictating how and when residents can see their families are heartless and rewriting them must be a priority
Buy prints or signed copies of Times cartoons from our Print Gallery at timescartoons.co.uk or call 020 7711 7826homes to make their own judgment
on “the benefits to a person’s
wellbeing by having a particular
visitor”. But Covid protocols are so
rigid and labyrinthine that few
homes would dare risk being sued.
The indemnity given to the NHS to
prevent legal claims from those who
catch Covid in hospitals should be
extended to care homes, with the
government either underwriting
their insurance policies or passing
urgent legislation. This would give
homes no excuse for long and
needless blanket bans.
Quick lateral-flow tests being mass
trialled in Liverpool are seen as the
ticket to normal visits. Four pilot
schemes are under way but won’t be
implemented widely for a month.
Even then the scenario of a relative
enjoying a cup of tea while they wait
30 minutes for a negative result is a
stretch. These tests require every
care home to make space for a mini-
lab and train a carer to process tests
in a special machine.
In the meantime, government
rules need to be urgently rewritten,
to stipulate that visits are an
essential human right. Every resident
should be allowed a designated
relative who is tested like a key
worker. Then the Perspex screens
must come down. A tiny risk, yes, but
for a mighty purpose. The person
your mother needs to hug is you.couples inseparable for 50 years
waving through windows, a
parliamentary debate where MPs of
all parties read out heartbreaking
constituents’ letters and 4,000
families joining a new lobby group
called Rights for Residents.
The government insists these
measures are to protect the
vulnerable elderly after the wildfire
outbreak which led to 20,000 care
home deaths. Except that avoidable
atrocity and the new visiting rules
reflect the same belief: old people
don’t matter much. First they were
collateral when infected patients
were dumped in their midst to
“protect the NHS”, now they are
incarcerated to protect the
government’s reputation from
further damage.
When students were locked down
in halls, posting jokey requests for
beer on kitchen windows even though
they could hang out together and
contact families via phones, this was a
mental health emergency and now a
military-style planned evacuation will
get them home for Christmas. Yet old
people are frequently confined to
their rooms 24 hours a day for weeks,
speaking only to the person who
brings food, forbidden all visits, often
unable cope with Zoom calls, and
they will be denied their families
around them at Christmas.
Government guidance allows forphrase, so I just quietly held her
hand. This was October 3, before
South Yorkshire entered Tier 2
measures, and the pragmatic,
humane matron, knowing I travel
200 miles and a half-hour window
visit wouldn’t work since my mum is
bed-bound and mainly asleep, let me
stay all afternoon. I’ve never felt
more needed.
Now care homes are closed for visits
unless someone is 72 hours from “end
of life”. This can be incalculable and
being present at these unconscious
dying moments is perhaps lessimportant than giving reassurance and
love when it can still be felt. Often the
rules make no sense: a relative can be
summoned to drive a parent to
hospital for treatment but once
they’ve been returned, the door again
slams shut. Many with dementia are
dying more quickly without
stimulation and familiar faces, while
those cursed by still having a sense of
time pine away, refuse to eat, see no
point in being alive.
The frustration and misery has led
to daughters being arrested for
taking parents home, pitiful scenes ofM
y friend was dressed in
a plastic visor, gloves
and full PPE, while her
mother, 91, sat behind a
floor-to-ceiling Perspex
screen. Separated as if in prison from
a parent she’d lived with until
recently and knowing she was
desperate for physical contact, my
friend asked a carer to hug her
mother: “Mum, imagine it’s me!”
What a bizarre place this
pandemic has led us to. My friend is
shielding as much as the carer who
returns to her own family each night,
their local authority has the fifth
lowest infection rate in England and
Sage evaluates visitors to homes as a
minimal risk. Yet still you must ask a
proxy to cuddle your mum, like a
grotesque parody of the potter’s
wheel scene in Ghost.
We cannot, largely, blame the
homes. They face new government
rules which don’t read like a how-to
guide for reuniting lonely old people
and families after eight miserable
months, but a deterrent from having
any visits at all. Barely solvent homes
which bought gazebos for summer
meet-ups must, now that dragging
octogenarians outside risks
hypothermia, create fully ventilated,
two-entrance, indoor “pods” with
“substantial” screens. Hard-pressed
staff must ensure “high-quality
infection prevention and control
practice”, disinfect after every visit
and police anyone breaching the
Perspex to hold a hand.
How then is a masked and
screened relative supposed to
communicate with a confused,
elderly person? The government
gives handy tips. Style your hair in a
familiar manner, keep eye contact,
speak up and (seriously) don’t wear a
hat. Such visits are gruelling in
normal times. The forced-cheerful
“it’s me, Dad!” moment when a
parent forgets who you are, the
repeating yourself ever louder to deaf
ears and the constant struggle to
make conversation with someone
who goes nowhere and these days
doesn’t even watch TV.
No matter. The point is you are
there. Your visit may be forgotten the
instant you leave but for that hour
your existence is magical. The mere
sight of his two grandsons once
made my father burst into tears.
When I last saw my mother, 97, she
could only utter the odd scrambledThe indemnity given
to the NHS should be
extended to care homes
Janice
Turner@victoriapeckham