Care homes to allow ‘multiple visits a week’ for relatives
RELATIVES will be able to visit their loved ones in care homes “multiple times a week” under Government plans, a minister has revealed.
Helen Whately, the care minister, shared further details of a pilot visiting scheme in an online update. She said designated family members who provided regular personal care would be able to visit several times a week.
The pilot was announced this week. However, it is unclear when it will start.
Ms Whately said she was “determined to give social care all the help we can to control Covid-19 this winter”.
She said: “We are working up proposals with clinicians and stakeholder groups to run a new visiting scheme. The scheme will allow specific or designated care home visitors, who provide regular personal care, to attend residential settings multiple times a week.
“We hope this will help reduce feelings of isolation among residents and provide additional support to care staff.”
Earlier this week, Ms Whately told the joint science and technology and health and social care committees she wanted to enable regular visiting, “but it must be safe”.
She also hinted that relatives of care home residents would be treated as key workers under the pilot scheme, to allow regular visits.
It is currently up to individual care home managers to ensure appropriate provisions are in place to enable safe visiting from relatives and friends.
However, some managers banned visits altogether to protect vulnerable residents from contracting Covid-19.
Campaigners called for a designated relative to be given key worker status, entitling them to have regular Covid-19 tests to help make visits safer.
It comes after The Daily Telegraph revealed that care homes have been told they will be expected to make room for Covid-19 patients discharged from hospital, despite the policy being blamed for the virus’s spread earlier in the year.
The Department of Health and Social Care sent a letter to providers urging them to prepare “isolation” rooms as the number of deaths continues to rise.
However, care home managers said the notion of having Covid-positive patients in the same building as vulnerable residents was “laughable”.
A DHSC spokesman said it was working with the CQC and NHS to ensure that everyone discharged to a care home had an up-to-date test result, with Covid- positive patients being discharged to a care home “the CQC has assured is able to provide care and support for people who are Covid-positive”.