At Steene Law we specialise in providing care law advice for self-funders.
Many of our clients are in residential care and because they are self-funders – meaning they have assets of more than £23,250 – they have to pay the higher rate care homes charge.
We like to visit all our clients in their care home wherever possible. We do this because we work on the legal presumption that everyone has mental capacity but we have an obligation to see for ourselves that this is indeed the case.
The second reason is more of a personal one. We have a firm belief here at Steene Law – that we “work for people not on case files” so putting a face to the name is very important.
In response to the worldwide Coronavirus pandemic, the Secretary of State for Health & Social Care has issued guidance to care homes about controlling the virus in residential home settings.
Most care homes have reacted by issuing a blanket ban on all visitors, except in the most urgent of situations. In our view this blanket approach is unlawful. A person may already be deprived of their liberty (usually care homes are locked) and so cannot get out of the care home.
Although these homes believe they are acting in the best interests of their residents, depriving them of the familiar face of a loved one, seems cruel.
We have heard from clients who have been denied access to help feed their relative because of a head office policy.
We do not normally write about individual care homes, but I am going to make an exception just this once.
We visited one home this week (w/c 16 March) that has bucked the trend of a blanket ban ‘no visitor’ policy. Instead, this home had carefully and sympathetically thought through how it could protect its residents whilst at the same time allowing essential visitors to enter.
We had reason to visit Heathlands Village in Manchester for a meeting. We needed to speak with the resident as it was in their ‘Best Interests,’ so the meeting went ahead as scheduled.
When we arrived there was no notice on the door telling us to go away! We were greeted by a volunteer who checked on a visitor list that we were expected and then directed us to clean our hands thoroughly with the sanitising gel.
Having been closely supervised over our hand cleaning, the doors were then opened electronically and a route to a meeting room had been prepared so it was possible to avoid coming into contact with any other residents.
A great deal of thought had gone into how they could accommodate the resident’s needs for this essential meeting, while at the same time protecting other residents and staff.
We have extended our heartfelt thanks to the Chief Executive Mr Mark Cunningham for the courtesy and assistance he and his staff extended us so that they could facilitate the work we are undertaking on behalf of his resident and our client.
During this difficult time, if you have concerns about access to your loved ones in residential care, please pick up the phone.
Call us on 0203 653 0623 for a free, initial telephone conversation. We are available from 8am to 7pm, Monday to Friday.