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Hospital and Care Home Visiting Restrictions Are “Cruel, Inhumane and Unnecessary”, Doctors Tell MPs

by Will Jones
29 April 2022 8:00 AM

The Pandemic Response and Recovery All-Party Parliamentary Group met this week to hear about visiting restrictions still being imposed by many care homes and NHS Trusts. Co-chaired by Rt Hon Esther McVey MP and Graham Stringer MP, the Group listened to evidence about the devastating effects visiting restrictions in hospitals have on patients and their loved ones. MPs also heard how visiting restrictions in care homes, along with the continued use of rolling lockdowns and over interpretation of testing guidelines, is leading to isolation, neglect and abuse of the residents.

Leandra Ashton, who co-founded The People’s Care Watchdog, Dr. Ammar Waraich, a medical registrar in the West Midlands, Carol Munt, experienced Patient Partner and Advocate and Dr. Ali Haggett, community mental health and wellbeing specialist, told MPs of the obstacles still in place when trying to visit a loved one and the shocking impact on vulnerable hospital patients, care home residents and their families.

All the speakers voiced serious concerns that obstacles are still in place in some healthcare settings. Politicians heard harrowing accounts of the harmful effects of isolation and loss of social contact on physical and mental health, safeguarding problems with medication, dehydration, hygiene and lack of basic care and the failures to uphold existing legislation to protect those who lack capacity.

Leandra Ashton’s mother was arrested in November 2020 for taking her grandmother out of her care home a day before the second lockdown. Two years on, many residents are still being isolated from their loved ones. She told MPs:

When I took the video of my mum being arrested taking my nan out of her care home, I did not think it would go viral. So many families got in touch and it led to us setting up the People’s Care Watchdog. We were struck by how much legislation is in place, such as Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, Deprivation of Liberty and the Mental Capacity Act, to protect those in care homes. These laws are simply not being upheld and instead guidelines are being over-interpreted and the legislation even used to keep people in care homes and hospitals as if they were prisons. The public bodies that are supposed to uphold the protective legislation are not doing so.

There are still obstacles in place when trying to visit a loved one in a care home and the impact has been and continues to be devastating. The safeguarding issues I am seeing and hearing about are atrocious. Residents left for hours in dirty, wet incontinence pads leading to dangerous pressure ulcers. Malnutrition. Dehydration. End of life medication given to patients without their or their family’s consent. Psychological trauma, post-traumatic stress and suicides have resulted because of this. Multiple systems are failing, including Local Authorities and the CQC. It is a complex situation that needs a bold approach by both empowering families and galvanising Government action to hold public bodies to account and stop private equity firms placing profit over people.

Listening to the evidence, Esther McVey said:

I am troubled by the evidence presented by our speakers, particularly the safeguarding issues and neglect that care home residents are suffering as a result. In hospitals, we have heard about patients losing hope and refusing treatment without the encouragement of family. We know patients have much better treatment outcomes when they have support from relatives and friends around them.

Most of the infection control measures that restricted visiting in healthcare settings have been removed, most recently NHS Trusts were told healthcare workers, patients and visitors no longer need to distance in hospitals, so I fail to see why and how these visiting restrictions are still in place in any healthcare setting. I shall be writing to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to ask that he makes it absolutely clear that all patients and residents must be able to see visitors.

Highlighting how visitation is an important and necessary part of healthcare, Carol Munt said:

In the same way that we would not stop prescribed medication and treatments, we should not have stopped visits. Why were decisions taken without any consideration for the need of patients and their families to connect? Why do we still have such variation in compassionate care across the country? There is no uniformity among care homes apart from the need to be profitable for their owners. Some care homes made a superhuman effort to arrange visiting, as did the Bristol Nightingale Hospital. There was good practice in some places so there should be good practice everywhere. We should expect more of these endemic situations and we must be prepared for them.

I could not comprehend how any Minister for Health and Social Care could allow this to happen and not make the effort to get his department to look at ways that visiting could be facilitated. I heard and continue to hear the most callous reports of relatives dying alone with no visitors. The same goes for hospital patients. Ultimately, I think we need legislation to ensure that visiting rights are enshrined and protected.

Medical Registrar Dr. Ammar Waraich reported that many hospitals are still preventing visits due to the potential risk of Covid spread:

The policy is cruel, inhumane and unnecessary. Seeing loved ones can be immensely therapeutic and give struggling patients the will to survive. It is deeply traumatic for families to lose loved ones suddenly or see them go through difficult treatment without being there in person. Video calls are not a good enough replacement and we do not have the staff, the time or resources to facilitate calls for all our patients.

Most infection control measures have been lifted as the level of risk is no longer there. Hospitals can no longer function as detention centres and an inpatient stay should not become a sentence. The policy was one of the major mistakes of lockdown. Visiting sick relatives in hospital is, and must remain, a fundamental right, not to be given up.

Co-chair Graham Stringer said:

I find it extraordinary that no visiting is allowed in some healthcare settings, even to this day. It is cruel that family members are being denied access to sick and vulnerable loved ones, often not getting regular updates, living in anxiety about what their relatives may be going through, but knowing they are going through frightening and difficult treatment, often at the end of their lives, without being able to be with them in person.

“At the height of the pandemic it was understandable that there were precautions but there is no longer a basis to that argument. All the restrictions have been lifted and NHS Trusts across England have now been told to ‘return to pre-pandemic physical distancing in all areas’. The government must take action to resolve this situation.

Speaking about her experience working in the community throughout the pandemic, Dr. Ali Haggett said:

I have spent the last eighteen months with the support group Unlock Care Homes, uncovering the plight of many thousands of families who are still denied regular, meaningful contact with care home residents and hospital patients. Even before Covid, we knew that isolating people, particularly older people, has a serious impact on physical and psychological health. We have continued to isolate adults in care and in some hospitals almost continuously for two years. The effects have been felt particularly badly by those with dementia. Many residents no longer recognise their families and have been denied the most basic of human needs.

My concern is that this situation is concealing neglect and abuse on a significant scale. One of my community members sadly died and the hospital has admitted liability partly because he was completely blind and couldn’t reach his food or drink. Had his wife been allowed to visit, this wouldn’t have happened. Families I work with report numerous issues still affecting them, not just visiting restrictions. Rolling lockdowns, over-interpretation of testing, PPE requirements resulting in poor communication and fear, lack of ancillary services such as podiatry or physiotherapy leading to huge health problems, residents asked to isolate when one person tests positive, sometimes for 10 days or more and the one significant visitor recommendation being ignored or rejected. Families must be able to visit openly and check the wellbeing of residents.

Stop Press: MPs and Peers including Esther McVey, Lord Frost, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Sir Graham Brady, Emma Lewell-Buck, Graham Stringer and Sammy Wilson have written to the Telegraph to say they are “deeply concerned” that visiting is still forbidden in many institutions where “over-interpretation of testing guidelines is leading to isolation, neglect and abuse of vulnerable residents”. They point out that Article 8 of the Human Rights Act and the Mental Capacity Act “could and should have protected against this situation arising” but this legislation is being “wilfully misinterpreted as an excuse” to keep people isolated in care homes and hospitals “as if they were prisons”.

Tags: Care homesHospitalsLockdown harmsPandemic APPG

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88 Comments
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Monro
Monro
2 years ago

Opposition to hunting is either politically motivated or factually ignorant.

The Burns report that led to the hunting act was chaired by an individual who knew little about hunting and ignored the most recent information available. The tyranny of the majority couldn’t even ensure that the hunting act was passed without an entirely inappropriate use of the parliament act to force this profoundly silly piece of legislation through.

Blair, whose wife instigated this cruel act, later admitted, in his dreadful book ‘A journey’, that it was a mistake.

In France, under a proportional voting democratic system, the countryside has its own party and a significant minority of support.

Obstructing hunting in France can land you with a Euro 30K fine and a year in jail.

Allez France!

53
-21
amanuensis
amanuensis
2 years ago

I don’t really like fox hunting very much.

But I do regard the ban as being an attack on British traditional culture. This is odd given the steps taken to encourage non-British traditional culture in the UK.

63
-17
Monro
Monro
2 years ago
Reply to  amanuensis

Indeed.

I don’t like Morris dancing or football very much, struggle to tell the difference, but I do not think that they should be banned…..

47
-12
Hoppy Uniatz
Hoppy Uniatz
2 years ago
Reply to  amanuensis

You know none of the other ways a wild animal can die (famine, disease etc) make very nice photographs either?

No… of course you do. In fact this last 2 years have shown us that we don’t make a very good show at ensuring a good death even for our own species, once they’re safely out of the way in care homes.

9
-1
wokeman
wokeman
2 years ago

It doesn’t say alot for a hunter gatherer species when they ban something that totally aligns to our instincts.

32
-18
Boomer Bloke
Boomer Bloke
2 years ago

I’m not really getting what he means by moral outrage, as opposed to animal welfare. If he had said class reasons I would have understood.

34
-2
Jonathan M
Jonathan M
2 years ago

It’s worth pointing out that very few of the 438 convictions secured under the Hunting Act were of people connected with registered packs of hounds. Most were for offences which would more accurately be described as poaching; the Merseyside Police seem to have been particularly keen on using the Act in this way.

Last edited 2 years ago by Jonathan M
36
-3
RTSC
RTSC
2 years ago

Of course it was Class War.

No Government, or animal welfare obsessive, could possibly claim to be concerned about animal welfare when they support the installation of thousands of rare bird and bat slaughtering windmills.

18
-1
Human Resource 19510203
Human Resource 19510203
2 years ago
Reply to  RTSC

Or do nothing about halal slaughter methods.

15
0
Less government
Less government
2 years ago

The hunting ban is all about jealousy, not animal welfare. It’s about having a pop at the country toffs, though most are ordinary decent people. Anyway, too many cars on the roads now for it to be safe for horses.

10
-4

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