THE SCOTTISH Government has been urged to speed up its decision-making on relaxing rules around care home visits.
Relatives of those in Scotland's care homes have previously pleaded with ministers to be allowed to visit their loved ones indoors.
Commitments have previously been made to examine whether anything could be done, but any progress appears to have stalled over the last few weeks. Matters have been hampered by a surge in coronavirus cases across Scotland in the past few weeks, forcing tighter nationwide restrictions to be imposed.
Nicola Sturgeon confirmed that officials are still weighing up how rules can be safely relaxed without risking vulnerable care home patients being exposed to the virus. During the first wave of the pandemic, care homes were hotspots for outbreaks.
At First Minister’s Questions, Liberal Democrats leader Willie Rennie pointed to the case of a 94-year-old woman who is “terrified of being alone” and has been left “distraught” by not being able to see her family.
He added: “I understand that the decisions are tough, but they will not get any easier if we keep on delaying them.
“The families want to see their loved ones. It has been months now, and they are desperate. I know that the First Minister understands that, but I urge her to try to move faster on the issue, because that is what the families need.”
The First Minister insisted that “we all deeply care about the issue” and admitted that “decisions on that issue are probably the toughest”.
She said: “On the one hand, I desperately want families of residents in care homes to have normal visiting; on the other hand, I desperately want to do everything that we can to avoid the risk of Covid getting into care homes, because we know from the dreadful experience earlier in the year about the harm and damage that that does and the toll that it can take in terms of deaths.
“Therefore, we are treating those issues carefully, and we are considering the issues deeply.”
Ms Sturgeon told MSPs that Health Secretary Jeane Freeman has met with concerned relatives, stressing that “we are acutely aware of the importance of visiting for health and wellbeing”.
She added: “A process is already under way, which started in late June, if memory serves me correctly. That is a staged approach to the reintroduction of visits in care homes. It started with outdoor visits and now care homes are looking to reintroduce indoor visiting.
“The restrictions that were announced last week for the population have not affected that. In fact, part of the reason for putting those restrictions in place is to try to get the virus under control so that we do not have a situation in which we cannot proceed to greater flexibility around care home visiting.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel