The Covid memorial wall in London. Photograph: Matt Crossick\/PAView image in fullscreenThe Covid memorial wall in London. Photograph: Matt Crossick\/PANo surprise and lasting anger: families of people who died in care homes react to Covid inquiry reportRelatives recount distress and loneliness their loved ones went through in pandemic as a result of isolation policy\u201cAt the time it felt like a devil\u2019s bargain \u2013 it was horrible, but it was what [we thought] we had to do to keep people safe,\u201d says Amy of the \u201cdevastating\u201d and \u201cterrifying\u201d restrictions that led to her maternal grandparents being locked down in separate care homes during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.Eva and Eric had been married for more than 60 years when her dementia and his increased frailty meant they needed separate residential support. When the first lockdown was announced in March 2020, however, it in effect cut them off from each other and their granddaughter, to whom they had been especially close after the early death of Amy\u2019s mother.\u201cI spoke to Grandad on the phone when it was possible \u2013 it often wasn\u2019t possible due to staff not being able to take him a phone \u2013 and he was desperately lonely, isolated in his room, unable to talk to anyone because they were worried about [the spread of Covid],\u201d says Amy, 39, who lives in Milton Keynes and works for a large software company. \u201cI consoled myself that they were keeping him safe.<\/p>\n
That all the isolation was necessary.\u201dInstead, she says, he was depressed and very afraid until he finally caught the virus in 2022. Amy saw him for the first time on a Covid ward, \u201cwhen I had to beg and beg and beg the hospital staff to let me visit him\u201d. Eric died shortly afterwards.View image in fullscreenEva and Eric. Photograph: SuppliedSix years after Covid struck, the latest report from the public inquiry into the pandemic, published this week, has convinced Amy that the policy of isolating residents was \u201ccruel and pointless\u201d, she says. \u201cI want to smash something.<\/p>\n
I can never get that time with them back.\u201cThe impression I had at the time was that [the government] were doing their best in the face of an unstoppable tidal wave, but it sounds like they put out a hand and expected it to stop the ocean.\u201dThe inquiry concluded that the entire care sector had been an \u201cafterthought\u201d to government planners, and that a claim by the then health secretary, Matt Hancock, to have put a \u201cprotective ring\u201d around residents was entirely unfounded. Instead, the decision to discharge untested patients from hospitals into care homes led to the virus spreading \u201clike wildfire\u201d, while blanket restrictions on outside contact led to \u201cimmense emotional harm\u201d and \u201cprofound isolation\u201d for vulnerable residents.The findings are no surprise to the family members of care home residents, many of whom have told the Guardian of the immense distress their loved ones went through. Roger Dennison\u2019s father, Lucius, was a sprightly 90-year-old care home resident when the first reports of the coronavirus emerged; they watched the news together in Lucius\u2019s room and wondered how quickly it would peter out.Weeks later, Lucius\u2019s care home had firmly locked down, and the only way Dennison could talk to his dad was through a window that had been opened a few inches at the top. \u201cYou\u2019re standing on tiptoe, trying to shout in and then be heard on the other side,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was very confusing. It wasn\u2019t very happy as an experience.\u201d They tried it just once but stopped because it was too distressing for Lucius.Lucius Dennison.<\/p>\n
Photograph: Roger DennisonAfter that, Dennison, who had previously visited every other day, was reliant on passing messages through staff, while Lucius was \u201cin his room, largely on his own\u201d. The disease \u201cbecame a growing apprehension for me once it became clear people were coming into the home and bringing it with them\u201d, says his son. \u201cI think there was a sense of inevitability.\u201d Lucius caught Covid in the first wave and died in hospital in April 2020.To care workers, too, the situation was terrifying and immensely distressing, says Nick (not his real name), who was a senior worker at a home in West Yorkshire. \u201cThe situation from the very start was frightening because we all thought that if you got Covid, you died or were going to be seriously unwell. I remember having to strip naked at the back door of my house because we had a resident return from hospital who had shared a ward with Covid patients. As a care home, we tried to refuse their return based on the risk of infection but were told [by the hospital] that we couldn\u2019t.\u201dFrom that point, he says, \u201call hell broke loose\u201d. \u201cOur first case of Covid was about a week later.\u201d They had already run out of personal protective equipment, he says.\u2018Superficial damp squib\u2019: Covid inquiry recommendations fail to impress bereaved familiesRead more\u201cThe mental health impact on all staff was huge.<\/p>\n
Watching people die at such a high rate in such a small space of time; having to say goodbye to so many people we came to know and love; putting our own health on the line every day and then quite possibly carrying that home to your family. Mentally, we were all spent.\u201dLike many, Catherine Bennett, a retired teacher from Lewes in East Sussex, says she was not shocked by the inquiry\u2019s findings: \u201cWe knew what was happening. I am, however, very angry.\u201d Her father, who had been in a care home since 2018, \u201cfelt a terrible sense of abandonment\u201d that no one was able to visit and became paralysingly afraid of catching the virus.\u201cFor a long time he didn\u2019t go down for meals; he stopped doing all his activities so he wouldn\u2019t meet anybody.\u201d After some months, she says, the care home built a room where residents could talk to relatives through a glass panel and speakers. It was, she says, \u201cvery distressing for a man of his age to be separated from his loved ones in that way, to be able to see us through the glass but not be able to touch us or have any meaningful contact\u201d.<\/p>\n
Her father died in the home in 2022.Diana, a retired social worker from Derby, feels a similar lasting anger about the experience of her sister, Helen, whose mental health needs meant she was living in a care home in Carlisle when the pandemic struck, and who experienced a similar bewilderment at her sudden isolation. The first time Diana was able to sit with her was after a year of lockdown when Helen was very unwell; she died the same day.\u201cI just think they threw care homes under a bus while they partied in Downing Street, and I do feel rather cross about that,\u201d says Diana. \u201cI think it is a major trauma for this country and I think it should never be forgotten.\u201dExplore more on these topicsCovid inquiryCoronavirusSocial careCare workersOlder peopleHealth policyfeaturesShareReuse this content<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Covid memorial wall in London. Photograph: Matt Crossick\/PAView image in fullscreenThe Covid memorial wall in London. Photograph: Matt Crossick\/PANo surprise and lasting anger: families of people who died in care homes react to Covid\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}