A legal letter sent to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) says that the blanket ban on older care home residents going on trips to see family or friends violates human rights legislation. Campaigners say that residents are being treated like “a different species”. The Telegraph has the story.
A ban on care home residents taking trips is facing a legal challenge amid claims they are being treated like “a different species” and denied “simple freedoms”.
Government guidance, updated on March 9th, says trips to see family or friends “should only be considered” for under-65s while national Covid restrictions apply.
Visits out for residents, whatever their age, “should be supported in exceptional circumstances such as a visit to a friend or relative at the end of their life”, it adds – but on returning to the home, the resident must self-isolate for two weeks.
The Government said its current guidance provides a “range of opportunities” for visitors to spend time with loved ones, however, John’s Campaign, which represents those lobbying for extended visiting rights of family carers in hospitals and care homes, argue that the ban is unlawful.
Julia Jones, co-founder of the John’s Campaign, has said that care home residents have been “comprehensively ignored” over the past year of lockdowns.
The 440,000 people living in care homes include some who moved in through their own volition, with full mental capacity, never guessing that this simple freedom, enjoyed by everyone else in the population, apart from prisoners, could so easily be denied them.
Those who cannot make their own choices have relatives and friends who would normally be glad to take responsibility but have been excluded choices.
Her campaign group has sent a legal letter to the DHSC urging it to change its guidelines.
John’s Campaign has now sent a legal letter to the DHSC saying the decision whether someone can go on a visit outside a care home should be based on individual risk assessments, and that to deny this contravenes equality and human rights legislation.
“The Department of Health, and particularly Public Health England, looks at care home residents as if they are a different species,” Ms Jones added. “These are people living in care homes and they have the range of morbidities, of problems, of disabilities and of capabilities.”
“The first point they did this was July last year, they said they are looking into guidance for visits out of care homes. And they have been looking into it ever since,” she added.
“People living in care homes are people very often living towards the end of their lives, or they are people living with a learning disability, for whom their wellbeing is dependent on their routines.
“These people have been comprehensively ignored.
“We understand this guidance was prepared very hastily, we sent a message back at the time, they have had almost a month to make it better, they haven’t done so. We’re just not going to wait – this is unlawful and wrong.”
Worth reading in full.
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About time. I want this government hung out to dry!
It’s more than being ignored. They haven’t been treated properly from the beginning. Stopped from seeing their loved ones. Left to die when Ivermectin and other drugs could have saved thousands.
Given vaccines that probably killed some more, and now this. Shameful, and this foul, evil, corrupt Government have made me a party to it. I will never ever forgive or forget this ’cleansing’ of the elderly.
Plus they were pretty deliberately infected then left without medical care, and stuck with DNR notices, and NOW they want to “protect” them
We keep hearing “this or that legal action has been launched” but there never seem to be any results from any of them. I realise that our judicial system is as inept and inefficient as our health service but are these cases being actively blocked from being heard?
A few more practical actions, aiding the elderly in escpaing back to their familis, would be much more effective. 10 or 20 successful rescues making the national news would cause this inhumanity to utterly collapse.
I don’t know which us fouler: their treatment of old people or their treatment of children.
Hell gapes for the perpetrators in either case.
Unfortunately there is little to choose between the two, however I believe that the conditioning of our children to think that it is acceptable to be continually tested & treated as vectors of infection, forced to wear masks all day & be deprived of education may just be fractionally worse, but it is very hard to accept that the treatment of either group is anything other than unethical and unacceptable and criminal.
There should be legal challenges against all this stuff, especially ‘covid passports’
Tomorrow I’m going to see my mother for the first time since she sadly had to move into care last October. We’d tried so hard to avoid it, but a hospital stay meant she wasn’t allowed home. We couldn’t help her settle in, or bring any of her personal possessions. She has nothing familiar, and has been cut off from her family. She can’t manage technology. The visit will be 15 minutes. She isn’t in hospital, she is supposed to be in her “home” yet she can’t see family, can’t go out, and will probably have no idea who I am, behind my mask, apron and gloves.
I know we’re not alone, but in what world, anywhere, is this pointless cruelty acceptable?
In hell.
this is the worst of anything how the elderly are treated- the cruelty! .i will never forgive
those who did this ever , and the sheep who go along with it all. i wish there was something i could to about this despicable cruel treatment of our elderly population
im glad you can visit maybe try taking off both your mask your and you moms? and the gloves .anything to bring some warmth adn familiarity
If I was in this position I would remove my mask and give mum the biggest smile followed by the biggest hug !
That is heartbreaking. I am so sorry for you and your mum and for all our elderly souls living their last days marooned from their loved ones. It is sickeningly cruel.
And yet they call these very expensive prisons ‘care’ homes. It is a scandal and Bella Donna is so right.
I take bare comfort from knowing that my solitary nature may be rewarded in the end. I’m in my 60s, have moved and not registered with a new GP. I don’t take medications and intend to avoid any type of medical care for the rest of my life. I prefer to die at home alone, no matter how much shorter my life is, than to take the chance of being imprisoned in one of those hell holes.
I have watched a friend living in a care homes, rapidly deteriorate over the past year. She had to self isolate for two weeks after attending her husband’s funeral and again after a visit to the dentist. Cruelty at its finest.
The infamous words spring to mind…
“It’s for your own safetey”
Hi TJS123 in particular,
Hope this might help
https://dailysceptic.org/2021/04/02/legal-action-launched-to-challenge-ban-on-trips-for-older-care-home-residents/#comment-469751
Hi TJS123 in particular. Hope this might help
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/03/allan-stevo/how-to-visit-a-doctors-office-or-nursing-home-without-face-masks/
The trouble is, this Tin-pot dictatorship will completely ignore it as they have with every other attempt to use the law against them. They’re going to need the law to make a stand against the government as happened in Belgium. Unlikely here it seems. Human rights to this lot are a meaningless nuisance.