Why Our Loved Ones Need The Human Touch To Survive

Throughout the Covid-19 crisis there have been few sights as distressing as that of the anxious face of 97-year-old dementia sufferer Tina Thornborough as police surrounded her daughter’s car in a garden centre car park.

- Ross Clark

Frustrated after months of trying to bring her mother home, 73-year-old retired nurse Ylenia Angeli, had finally cracked and taken matters into her own hands. Allowed one last visit before lockdown – to see her mother through the window of the care home where she lives in Market Weighton, Yorkshire – Ylenia instead forced her way into the room, collected Mrs Thornborough and drove her off. The car was quickly tracked down by police.

She’ll have had the sympathy of thousands of similarly separated families. Of course it has been right to protect the elderly from Covid-19, the chances of dying from which rise rapidly with age, but it should never come at the cost of humanity.

To deprive people of contact with their loved ones is a horrible way to treat them. Come the pandemic, however, such considerations were put to one side as the Government focussed exclusively on trying to prevent infection. Executive orders banning care home visits were passed without even being debated in Parliament.

WHILE the ban was later relaxed and some visits allowed, still many families report being unable to visit their relatives – or allowed any proper contact. The brief respite of freedom that the rest of us enjoyed during the summer never quite reached care homes.