Real impact of guidance

My mum is new to her care home. The new visiting guidance is having a real impact on our family.

Asking care homes to do lateral flow tests on their residents for 10 days after a trip out causes a number of problems:

• Residents with dementia don’t understand why someone is poking a stick up their nose and can react badly. This means many relatives don’t want to put them through that every day due to the negative effect that can have on their mood and relationship with carers.

• Taking a resident out, even once a week, results in continuous lateral flow tests until the guidance changes.

• The resulting reluctance to take residents out means more demand on visiting in the home, or calls to the home. Which, in turn, means less availability.

In my case, this means one visit for half an hour next week, or one call. So, when the rest of the country are having their family gatherings and parties over Christmas those in care homes are having significant restrictions placed on their right to see family and friends.

The Government needs to put more thought into this: we are almost two years in. I understood the need to keep the vulnerable safe prior to vaccinations. But we have those vaccinations and boosters and more knowledge now. So why can’t we have COVID passes for allowing visits to care homes to allow more freedom for visiting, and legislation to back this up so that there aren’t any issues for care homes opening their doors again? We can’t go on indefinitely in this situation.