Family anguish over care home visiting rules is laid bare
Heartfelt plea as petition gathers 17,000 signatures
An East Kilbride family has written a heart breaking open letter begging for changes to care home visiting rules.
Indoor visits from family are only allowed under limited circumstances – including end-oflife care.
But Campbell Duke, whose 62-year-old wife, Anne, is in a care home in East Kilbride, told the News families see no “light at the end of the tunnel” with their loved ones “forgotten about”.
Care home visits in Lanarkshire at this time are restricted to outdoors only, with a maximum of three people from no more than two households.
But Campbell has warned that this will simply be “untenable” going forward due to weather conditions worsening coming into winter.
Campaigners previously gathered outside the Scottish Parliament demanding change.
And Campbell’ s daughter, Natasha, started a petition calling for urgent change which has secured over 17,000 signatures.
Now his letter, which has been sent to MSPs, government ministers and local government officials, lifts the lid on his family’s despair, telling how Anne, who suffers from Alzheimer’ s, nearly died from corona virus at the height of the pandemic.
It reads: “I write of my wife Anne, aged 62, who presently lives in a care home. She has endured Alzheimer’s for the past seven years.
“Your decisions have a powerful impact on her life.
“It is so hard to get your attention. Lord knows we try.
“Yo u issue what you call guidelines, yet for some of us these are experienced as harsh laws in which we have NO choice.
“At your behest Anne has now been locked behind closed doors for 200 days, and you collectively continue to forbid that we should ever be together again.
“She is so much more than a resident in a care home.
“She has a limited time left and almost died from coronavirus earlier this year. You cannot send her back in to the ring a second time without those who love her in her corner
“Thirty-six years of love summarily dispensed with on March 13, 2020.”
Campbell goes on: “You can have little comprehension how cruel and heartless this feels. I fear you have no end game?
“We see no light at the end of any tunnel.
“Have you any idea how humiliating it is to stand outside Parliament begging to be allowed to hold hands?
“To be treated like this by our fellow citizens seems so terribly wrong.
“To deny the inn ate love that beats in all our hearts is to deny our common humanity.
“It feels uncomfortably like discrimination on a personal and industrial scale.”
And Campbell poignantly adds: “Anne has endured this vicious illness for seven long and wear y years ; previously made worse by age and health discrimination, and now further exacerbated by this bewildering form of social care segregation.
“If you have no end game beyond a possible vaccine at some indeterminate point in the future.... please tell us.
“In the meantime Anne’s heart continues to beat! And if you hug her she will feel joy!
“You ought not to deny her any longer the beauty of her individuality and a life well lived.”