Shut out of care homes

sir – I sympathise with your reader (Letters, August 11) who concludes that the present visiting policy in many care homes lacks humanity.

My husband has been in a local care home since lockdown. My daughter and I are now able to see him once a week for 30 minutes in the garden, remaining two metres apart. When we visited last week my eight-year-old grandson hovered nearby in the garden, longing to say hello to his grandpa – but he was admonished by a member of staff, and told to move away. When I remonstrated, the reply was: “It’s not allowed; he is under the age of 13.”

The care home is one of a large number that operate stringent pandemic precautions, all of which are very laudable. However, it fails to allow staff to use common sense and humanity towards the residents for whom they care.

Rosemary Heyes

Tonbridge, Kent

sir – My mother, who is approaching 103, is also in a care home. Since the start of lockdown, I have visited once a week. As she is fortunate enough to have a ground-floor room, I speak to her on my mobile, from outside the window, and she uses her own landline. It means so much that she can see me, whatever the weather. I have had no need to enter the home.

Now the home has introduced new measures. I must enter the building at an allotted time, masked and sanitised, and must have completed a risk assessment. There are no exceptions.

This is, no doubt, in response to official guidance, but it seems a gross overreaction to public criticism of earlier failings in care homes.

Wendy Thomas

Lymington, Hampshire