The family of an England rugby player locked down in a care home have voiced “pure despair” at new visiting rules which mean thousands of care residents will continue to be denied contact with loved ones.
Kate Skillen, whose father, David Robinson, was a flanker in a county team that beat the New Zealand All Blacks in 1972 and toured Japan with England in 1971, said her family feel helpless that despite a pledge from the government to return to “unlimited visiting” from this week, rolling Covid outbreaks mean they cannot see him. Their last visit was on Christmas Day.
Robinson, 77, who later became a dairy farmer, has dementia and lives in a care home in Cockermouth, Cumbria. He is one of tens of thousands of care home residents in England who remain locked down because of the spread of Omicron. Under new guidance published on Monday which lifts restrictions on the number of people who can visit in care homes, settings where two or more staff or residents test positive for Covid must still stop all indoor visiting for 14 days, except at the end of life or if a visitor has been granted “essential care giver status”.
It means he is denied face to face visits with his three daughters, Beth, Anna and Kate, and seven grandchildren, including Hetty, three.
The new government guidance states: “We expect and encourage providers to facilitate visits wherever possible, and to do so in a risk-managed way.”
But the Rights for Residents campaign group said the continued restrictions on care visits into homes with outbreaks meant the restrictions were not a meaningful easing.
“It is a continuation of draconian lockdown measures, isolating our loved ones at a time in life when they need families and friends – it’s a disgrace,” the organisation said.
Up to 70% of the 165 homes operated by Four Seasons Health Care, one of the UK’s largest private operators, are currently closed to most visitors because of positive tests. 534 care homes in England reported Covid outbreaks to the UK Health Security Agency in the third week of January.
Jeremy Richardson, chief executive of Four Seasons, said he wants the government to change the definition of an outbreak “because the consequences of infection are dramatically different now”.
Covid deaths in England’s care homes are running at about 200 a week, nine times lower than the peak of the wave in January 2021.
“We have been told that visiting remains restricted and there appears to be a rolling outbreak,” said Skillen. “My dad still knows us, he is overcome with emotion when he sees us and repeatedly tells us he loves us and kisses us when we see him, gripping our hands. It is very upsetting and I can only hope and pray he doesn’t just think we’ve abandoned him.”
A quarantine period of 10 days is also still required after emergency hospital stays, which is discriminatory and deeply damaging to older people’s wellbeing according to Helen Wildbore, director of the Residents and Relatives Association.
“Six months after so-called ‘freedom day’, guidance on visiting in care homes still contains the most damaging restrictions on people’s movement and contact,” she said. “The government has ignored calls from the sector – even from care providers – to amend the definition of an outbreak which is leading to harmful isolation periods often rolling on for several weeks if more cases are detected.”
The Department of Health and Social Care has been approached for comment.