Care home resident shows 'pure joy' from daughter's first hug since March

Care home resident Audrey finally got a hug from her daughter for the first time in nine months after visitors who tested negative for COVID-19 were allowed to enter care homes on Wednesday.

Residents in care homes were able to embrace and kiss their family for the first time since March, after homes were able to allow visitors indoors from 2 December.

Rapid tests for COVID-19, which give results in 30 minutes, enabled relatives who had a negative COVID-19 test result to enter care homes wearing PPE in order to hug, hold hands and even kiss residents.

“Amazing” was the word daughter Shelly used to describe how it felt to give her mum a hug after eight months.

“She doesn’t understand", Shelly told Sky News:"You can tell her one minute and she understands that she’s not supposed to get close to you and then she’s get up and want to come towards you and it’s so hard to push somebody away.

“They’re upset not seeing you, not seeing the rest of the family, the grandchildren, the great grandchildren.”

She describes her relief to “just be able to give her that hug and that close contact” inside Kepplegate House in Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire.

’Really emotional, I was crying’ says care home worker

Describing what it was like to be able to reunite residents with their families for hugs and kisses, Adam Purnell care quality manager at the home, told Sky News: "It was just absolutely incredible.

"I was telling Audrey I’m going to go and do your tests for your daughter and your son-in-law."

Mr Purnell, who filmed the mother and daughter embrace, said: “The pure joy for the both of them was just fantastic to see. I mean it was really emotional. I was crying, my team were crying everyone was crying.

“It’s been eight months since anyone’s had any real physical contact now and although we’ve been having face-to-face visits since June, it’s something that has been severely lacking.

“It’s just great to be able to reconnect people properly now. We call them relatives, we call them visitors but at the end of the day they are family carers."

More than a million rapid tests are being sent to care home providers over the next month, the government announced this week to allow indoor visits. It promised to send tests to England’s 15,500 care homes by Christmas to allow two visitors to visit twice a week.

Referring to the rapid tests, Mr Purnell said: “We’ve purchased, we’ve not received the government ones yet but we couldn’t wait any longer.

“We purchased 100 tests which will hopefully see us through to mid-January.”

To watch the moment Shelly and Audrey finally embrace for the first time since March due to coronavirus restrictions, click the video below.

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