Cathie’s story
Sixty per cent of families have been reunited with relatives living in care homes after a Sunday Mail campaign. But a survey from Care Home Relatives Scotland has revealed that 40 per cent are being restricted to visits of 30 minutes or less. Scottish Government guidelines now allow two designated visitors one hour’s indoor access for each resident. Cathie Russell, founder of CHRS, said it’s clear Anne’s Law to honour basic human rights is still vital. Here, she shares her joy in getting to hug her mum for the first time in 12 months.
This week I had my first hug with my mum in her care home for almost a year. A few days later, it was my sister’s turn.
I can’t express the relief we feel that we have made it through to the other side of this nightmare – for now anyway.
But 15,479 people have died in residential and nursing homes since lockdown started last March, about a fifth of that number from Covid. There will be no happy reunions for them.
My mum Rose Hamilton is 89. She went into care in October 2019 after a fall in July that year when she broke her back.
The NHS advised that she would need 24/7 nursing. I made the best choice of care home I could – a 10-minute walk from my home.
Her first few months there went well – trips out on taxis with her wheelchair to visit friends and going for lunches.
On March 17, 2020, I had a great afternoon with her – a St Patrick’s Day party for two.
An email came later that night. It said the home was going into a full lockdown. Everyone assumed it would last a month or so and we’d be able to visit again. By
April, I was standing howling on the steps of the home pleading with embarrassed staff to let me see her.
What were they waiting for? Was it a vaccine? Because that might not come in my lifetime, let alone my mum’s.
Skype calls and window visits gave us some reassurance and my mum still knows us all. But virtual contact was useless for many other people. I lay awake night after night – sometimes I would literally start wailing so hard I didn’t know where it was coming from.
I constantly tried to work out how I could bring her home – but it’s so much easier said than done and
I’m the only family member still in Glasgow.
Last August I joined with other women to set up Care Home Relatives Scotland.
We believe the Government’s strategy, which treated the closest relatives of people in care as unnecessary footfall, was deeply wrong and an infringement of our loved ones’ human rights.
Other European countries, such as France, ordered care homes to open last May.
With good infection control and PPE, at least one close relative could and should be allowed in regardless of lockdown levels. To deem our closest attachments as dispensable for so long has caused untold damage.
Many people have declined, lost their mobility and the will to live through enforced isolation from husbands, wives and others who mean so much to them.
Research by Care Home Relatives Scotland into restarting visits is uncovering a large gap between homes that are opening up and those doing little to reunite people.
Care staff are tested three times a week and it only takes one false positive result to close a home to visits again.
Ultimately, the only way to rebuild faith in nursing and residential care is to bring in Anne’s Law for one essential visitor. It would provide families assurance their husband, wife or other loved one will never be entirely cut off again, regardless of what’s happening in terms of this virus or others in future.