100-year-old pleads to see all her children as quarter of a million sign petition against care home visit ban

Families have marched to 10 Downing Street to deliver a 267,000-strong petition demanding care home residents, like 100-year-old Frances, be allowed to see their families when they want and penalise care homes that fail to allow it.

Eighteen months into the pandemic, campaigners say care home residents are still being denied the right to a family life with some only allowed one 15 minute visit from just one family member every two or three weeks, despite all parties being fully vaccinated.

This includes 100-year-old Frances who lives in a care home and says she cannot see her son and daughter.

In a video, Frances says: “After 18 months of being shut out from the outside world, my daughter can now see me in my room but my other daughter and my son are not allowed in my room.

“But 90,000 people can visit the Leeds [music] festival. Human rights and equality is out altogether.”

Government guidance has been amended to include the need for every resident to nominate an essential care giver / visitor that can visit in all circumstances, including during a Covid outbreak. But despite this, families say many care homes refuse to follow the official government guidance - as it is advisory and not law - and instead impose their own more restrictive visiting regime.

Mandated care home visiting and penalties

Campaigners are urging the government to stop lives being lost through isolation by passing Gloria’s law, which gives every care home resident the legal right to nominate an essential care giver/visitor that can visit regardless of outbreaks, tier restrictions, lockdowns or Covid-19 variants.

They are also calling for the creation of official care home visiting guidance that brings those living in care settings in line with the rest of society who are no longer subject to any Covid restrictions.

Campaigners want to see the government mandate visiting guidance for care homes and introduce clear penalties for those that refuse to implement them.

The petition was delivered to Downing Street on 16 September by 300 people directly affected by what campaigners call ‘inhumane’ Covid care home visiting bans.

Campaigners from the Rights for Residents group protested at the gates of Downing Street at 1pm on alongside Ruthie Henshall, a West End performer turned ambassador for Rights for Residents campaign group, who says she has been personally affected by harsh visiting restrictions imposed in care homes during the pandemic.

She is now urging Health Secretary Sajid Javid to support ‘Gloria’s Law’.

She says her mother Gloria, aged 87, died in a care home and she witnessed "her decline from the other side of a window", over many "torturous months".

The petition posted on change.org states: 'Family contact is an essential part of care that has been denied from residents during the pandemic and the huge deterioration in their mental and physical health has been shocking.

‘Many have simply given up the will to live, leaving families unable to say their last goodbyes. Whilst the general public can socialise whenever and wherever they want, many residents and their families have to plead with their care home manager just to be allowed to sit in their own room together.'