IT ISN’T JUST PHYSICAL CARE THAT’S IMPORTANT
RETIRED signwriter John Cross, 76, from Minchinhampton, Glos., has been in a care home for four years since developing mild dementia. His wife Angela, 76, has been campaigning since the first lockdown for care-home residents’ rights to family life.
‘It isn’t just physical care that’s important: when you’re in a care home, family is everything. Residents are being denied their right to a family life,’ she says. ‘John is on his own 24/7 unless I visit, or a carer goes into his room to feed or turn him. He is totally isolated, in a room by himself at the end of a corridor. Before he had a stroke in August 2020, he had a great sense of humour and he and the other residents mixed.
‘In the past year, he developed cataracts so is totally blind. He would have deteriorated anyway, but this is inhuman — the visitors’ pods especially. Residents don’t need to be put in a glass case to be viewed like monkeys. He finds it unbearable, and tells me: “I’ve got to get out of this place. I’m in prison.” ’
Angela says she had to fight to become an essential caregiver, which means she can visit daily. She and her daughter Rachel handed a petition, with 270,000 signatures, to Health Secretary Sajid Javid last September that said it should be made law for residents to have an essential caregiver.
‘But they left it up to care homes to decide,’ she says. ‘People no longer matter.
‘John rarely speaks now. He wants to come home and has lost his sense of humour. It’s so long since he saw his grandchildren, he asks if they still know him. It’s heartbreaking.’