Care homes have become like jails as health bosses battle to cut the spread of coronavirus, MPs and peers were warned yesterday.
Giving evidence to the all-party parliamentary group on coronavirus, Helen Wildbore, director of the Relatives and Residents Association, said residents felt care homes had become their “prison” because of curbs to prevent the surge of Covid-19.
She said: “Many of the callers to our helpline have been telling us that the current situation in care homes is now very much like a prison with such restricted visiting, residents unable to leave the grounds of the home and limited interaction with other residents and staff.
“This had had a really devastating impact on mental health, not only for the people using care services but also for the staff who have been through some very challenging times over the past six months dealing with the isolation and loneliness.”
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Ms Wildbore also warned of the “knock-on impact” on families’ mental health after relatives’ visits were banned to stop the surge in cases.
“The anxiety they have had, not knowing whether the care home their relative is in has Covid, what the Covid status of that home is, the anxiety of if you have calls over video, watching and seeing your relative slowly deteriorate over weeks and months,” she said.
“They can see how much weight the person is losing, they can see how much their mental health is deteriorating – and that’s heartbreaking for the relatives, as well as the people actually living in care settings.”
Relatives and Residents Association chairwoman Judy Downey blasted early guidance for the sector as “so confusing”.
She accused those who issued advice of “thinking they must protect life at all costs without actually valuing what makes life worth living”.
She added: “It’s interaction with the people they love and doing things they like – and all of that is gone.
“It’s people living in a kind of hideous limbo.”
Independent Age policy chief Morgan Vine estimated 98,000 people had lost a partner during the pandemic – though not necessarily from the virus.
“There are going to be many people in later life who are experiencing complex grief – where you might have experienced multiple bereavements in one go, you didn’t know they were coming, you couldn’t be there with the person, you don’t know if the had a good end of life,” she said.
“All of that can combine to create a situation where people experience PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) symptoms and would need professional support.”
MPs and peers on the cross-party panel were told care home residents were “abandoned” during the pandemic.
According to written evidence from Independent Age, “the social care system has not been given the same protection as the NHS” which “has resulted in many people not receiving the care they needed and has put more pressure on family carers”.
A 14-page dossier published for yesterday’s(WEDS) hearing over video link added that “inequality and ageism in the health sector has been ‘exacerbated by the response to the pandemic’”.
A submission from NHS Providers said the “care home sector has clearly suffered considerably during the pandemic, with high numbers of excess deaths and emergency funding unable to repair the damage caused by years of underinvestment”.
It added: “The failure of adequate testing and supply of PPE have hit the care sector particularly and remains problematic.
“NHS Providers further notes the issue of agency workers transmitting the virus when moving between different care homes.”
