THIS Mother’s Day many with mothers in care homes will be feeling the misery of barely having seen,their mums in a year. In spite of easing of restrictions and new government guidance, many will suffer the heartache of not being able to see them this Mother’s Day, or have proper meaningful contact. When they do visit their relatives, many, because of individual care home rules, will also still not be able to touch them.

Spokesperson for Care Home Relatives Scotland, Cathie Russell, said, “Severe restrictions will still be making thousands of people miserable this Mother’s Day. Many care home groups have not started any visiting at all. This week I was speaking to a husband broken hearted that he could not see his wife on their 55th wedding anniversary and was not allowed to give her flowers. Large families are still having to choose which of the sons and daughters can get the designated visits. Some are not allowing any visits at weekends so no chance of getting there on Mother’s Day.”

Scottish Government guidance is that “physical touch should be supported when a surgical mask is worn by the person visiting, as are brief hugs or embraces.” But some care homes are still asking that visitors stay two metres away from loved ones and refrain from physical contact.

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Diane Smith described, “It is now over a year since I gave my mum a hug. It’s been so hard. Her home suffered a big outbreak of Covid last year and 10 residents died. This was an extremely distressing time. This is the second Mothers’ Day that I won’t be able to sit in the same room as her or give her a hug and I can’t even describe how distressing that is. Next week the home are beginning to open up and allow one visitor per resident a week but are not allowing physical contact and are keeping residents and their loved ones two metres apart. This just feels unbearable. My mum is in the late stages of dementia and has deteriorated a lot over the last year - from two metres away, she won’t even know who I am.”

A survey by Care Home Relatives Scotland, found that, by last weekend, 41 percent of respondents had still not been given a date for the start of designated indoor visits, and and 4 percent were allowing no visitors at all.

Sheila Hall said that her 96-year-old mother, had been vocal about the impact of restrictions over the las year. “Mum will say that she would rather have had a year of me being able to go in and see her as an essential carer and if she had got ill and died in that time so be it. She says when you’re that age, it’s quality of days not quantity. ”

But also, in this run up to Mother’s Day, many spoke of the joy of first meetings. Ann Ruthven, whose mother has dementia, told of a visit made to her mum’s home in Fife with her father last week. She said, “My mum’s been really distressed the last few weeks. I had a couple of calls from the home to speak to her just to calm her down. She couldn’t understand why we weren’t visiting her. Why were we ignoring her? She was scared. As a one off, because mum was so distressed, the home allowed both me and my dad to go in. There were no staff members in the room, but we were still two metres distanced. My mum was wearing a mask and my Dad couldn’t hear what she was saying.”

Cathie Russell acknowledged that there had been “some truly amazing progress” since the new guidance was announced. “Some care homes have pushed the boat out. But not all have. There are still a lot of providers who haven’t started any indoor visiting at all yet and a lot offering only 30-minute visits, which after a year of separation is miserable. We are living in a country where husbands and wives, parents and children have been stopped from seeing each other for a year now.. We can beam videos from other planets and a year down the line can’t enable a husband and wife to sit side by side and hold hands.”

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A spokesperson from Scottish Care said, “The new guidance started on the March 1 and it was intended that there would be an incremental build-up of visiting and that the period of time to enable providers to start the process of increasing meaningful access was up until the middle of the month. Our evidence from a survey of care homes is that the vast majority have already implemented the Guidance and we believe that this will constitute some 90 percent of providers by the middle of the month.”