The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Report finds legal basis for Covid restrictions in care homes ‘unclear’
Care home residents had their rights “thrown under a bus” when the Covid pandemic hit, a campaigner has claimed, after a report said the legal basis for restrictions in facilities is “unclear”.
A paper by Professor Colin McKay and colleagues at Edinburgh’s Napier University said there was “arguably discrimination” suffered by those in care homes when “compared with the rest of the community”.
It added that the “harm and distress” caused to residents may even have hastened death in some cases.
The report, commissioned and published by the Scottish Covid-19 Inquiry, told how residents in care homes were subject to “severe restrictions for many months”, with these including bans on visits, being unable to leave the home, and being cared for primarily in their room.
It stressed the need for restrictions was “understandable, given the vulnerability of care home residents and the large number of deaths in the sector”.
But it added: “The legal basis of the restrictions is unclear, and there was arguably discrimination in respect of this group compared with the rest of the community.”
Cathie Russell, of Care Home Relatives Scotland, said she had “always felt” the restrictions were “deeply wrong”.
The report said that in the early months of the pandemic, there was “little evidence” the human rights of care home residents and their families had been considered.
The report also stated that “more problematic legally is the fact that many residents were not allowed to leave the care home during the pandemic (or even their room in some cases), which is clearly a deprivation of liberty requiring lawful authority”.
It said: “There is substantial evidence of the harm and distress caused to residents and their families by the restrictions imposed in care homes.
“This includes concerns that, particularly for people with dementia, being unable to maintain contact with their family exacerbated cognitive and emotional decline, potentially hastening their death.”
Ms Russell told BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme: “The distress caused to relatives, none of that would come as a surprise to us, we saw those declines take place ourselves.”
Speaking about care home residents, she said: “Their rights were literally thrown under a bus, absolutely no consideration was given.
“We’re not talking about visitors here, we’re talking about people’s husbands and wives of 50 years, we’re talking the mothers of young adults not being allowed to see them.
“We always argued at least one family member should be allowed in, that would normally be the husband, the wife, the mother, whoever was closest to that person, they should not have been cut adrift for more than a year in many cases without any support at all from their loved ones.”
With large numbers of people transferred from hospital to care homes at the start of coronavirus pandemic, Professor McKay’s report also said “the extent to which patients and families had any effective say in this process is unclear”.
The study said there was “evidence of homes feeling pressured into accepting patients” and also “evidence that some patients who lacked legal capacity were transferred without the proper legal processes”.