One of the UK’s largest private care providers has banned residents’ families from making in-person visits unless they are chosen as “essential care givers”, in a policy that has angered relatives and appears to breach government guidance.
Barchester, whose facilities are home to around 11,000 people, has told families that because of the incoming Omicron wave “only those who are essential care givers are to visit inside our care home services and they must be fully vaccinated including the booster dose, and show proof of this”.
Until at least 23 December it will only allow other visits through screens, with conversations through intercoms where care homes have the facilities, although the number of people who can use these will be unrestricted. End-of-life visits will continue where the manager, supported by a medical professional, judges that stage has been reached.
The rules on routine visits are stricter than government guidance issued on Tuesday evening that three visitors should be allowed in homes in addition to an “essential care giver”. This allows one person per resident to be tested as part of the care staff regime and continue visits even during Covid outbreaks.
“I think it is absolutely scandalous,” said Victoria Pegg, whose 83-year old grandfather lives in a Barchester home in Northumberland. “My granddad has never been consulted on this change and it is his home. He has capacity to make decisions.”
She said his partner is his essential care giver but it means he won’t be able to have in-person visits with his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
“All that matters to him is his family,” said Pegg, who said he can’t communicate properly through the intercom. “I really feel like he is going to deteriorate massively.”
Diane Mayhew, the founder of the Rights for Residents campaign group, described Barchester’s policy as “absolutely unacceptable” and said she hadreported it to the regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
About 74% of care home residents in England had received a booster jab by 5 December. English care home Covid deaths averaged six a day in the first 10 days of this month, compared with 162 in January.
The chain’s chief executive, Pete Calveley, told families by letter on Monday the measures would be “a firebreak” and he said “re-opening to more visiting over the key Christmas period” was possible.
Sarah Eastlake, whose mother, Enid Lawson, 86, lives in a Barchester home in Epping, described the policy as “absolutely disgusting”. She pointed out that care staff could go to nightclubs and be in the same room as her mother, but loved ones could not. She has shelved plans to put up Christmas decorations in her mother’s room this week.
“We need to be there in person,” said Eastlake, whose mother is bed-bound and cannot manage a visit through a screen.
Mayhew said some families with loved ones in Barchester homes had been unable to get essential care-giver status. Barchester said it had “always followed official guidance”.
Barchester has also said it will require residents to isolate for seven days whenever they voluntarily leave the home, a rule that again goes further than the government guidance which asks for isolation only after an emergency stay in hospital.
Barchester said it was aware of the new guidance but “limiting those coming into the home is right for the moment”.
“Given what government experts are calling a ‘tidal wave’ of the Omicron variant, we are taking some pre-emptive action for a limited period of time to protect residents and patients in Barchester care homes and hospitals,” it said. “We also hope by doing this we can enable more visiting at Christmas, depending on what further information is known.”
Kate Terroni, chief inspector of adult social care at CQC, said: “Blanket approaches to visiting are unacceptable and may trigger an inspection.”
