Imprisoned. Crime: being elderly.

Just imagine waking up each day in a strange place, and not knowing where you are and what has happened to you.?It appears that your loved ones have abandoned you.?You don’t have a bag, money, or phone.?The doors to the outside are barred.?No visitors are allowed in.

On the 2nd of March 2021 my 94-year-old mother entered this nightmare scenario of separation from everyone she knew, without understanding why.?

I had contracted COVID and couldn’t look after her.?Mum had been unwell for a couple of weeks due to low sodium levels, and needed daily support.?Social services placed her in an emergency care home for one month, and the UK was still in lockdown.?

Despite her age, mum was a fit woman without any physical issues except cataracts and some hearing loss.?She walked all the time, without a stick, although her distances had lessened and she would need more frequent rests.?Sadly, her memory was in decline, and she been diagnosed with early stage dementia.?Dementia made her anxious, and she didn’t want to be left on her own.?

Being placed in a care home was extremely traumatic for her.?Being stuck in doors, an anathema.?But being physically cut off from those she loved and knew was torture.?

She pleaded on the phone to be visited, to go home, to go out.?Why had she been abandoned??She wrote notes on scraps of paper torn from a notebook, back an envelope, on her magazines asking for help, for me. ?One read “No money, no bag, no phone, please ask recipient to pay postage” with a muddled name and half remembered address.

Two weeks later, I was out of hospital feeling extremely weak but desperate to see mum, to hold her hand and reassure her. The care home said I could visit mum only in the ‘Pod’ as I had been ill.?The Pod being a room completely screened off from the care home lounge, and accessible for visitors through an external door.?

Mum wept in desperation through the Perspex screen each 30-minute visit, and my heart bled for her.?“What’s happened? Have I done something wrong?” she asked.?

The care staff asked me why mum was always walking – walking up and down the corridors and not staying in her room watching the telly like the other residents.?My mum had never been a normal elderly person. She liked to be out in the world and didn’t have a telly at home.

Social services were unable to put a care package in place for mum to return home until after Easter, and mum’s prison stay looked to be extended.?I decided she was coming out, come what may, but then mum had a fall two days before her release.?I arrived for a visit to be told that mum had been found on the ground in the corridor, and she was fine except for a graze.?

“Your mum shouldn’t be walking up and down so much,” said the nurse. “We were in a meeting.”

The nurse sat mum in the chair looking through the screen at me. She wasn’t fine. ?I asked the nurse to call the GP as I was concerned about a potential head injury.?The nurse left mum in the chair to make the call. Mum was moaning that felt sick.?Then I watched in horror as she vomited.?I was helpless.?There wasn’t an emergency button or phone in the visitor’s Pod.?Mum was vomiting on her own without any care staff in attendance for at least three or more minutes, while I tried to connect to the switchboard on my mobile.?

That night we stepped onto a carousel of ‘care’ settings.?A ride that took six months by which time mum had stayed in four different care homes, and two different hospital wards with two different admissions.?Not surprisingly, she was confused and terrified.

With the first hospital admission visitors were band due to lock down rules, but luckily for us the doors opened to one named visitor after the first five days.?Mum was delirious, hysterical and hoarse from shouting “I want my daughter”.?The interim nursing home put mum into a further two weeks isolation due to lock down rules.??As did the next one.?Then there were visitor restrictions again in the hospital that August to one named visitor.?(She had fallen out of bed in the night at the care home and fractured her pelvis.) ?It took six weeks to secure the final nursing home placement, and then they required yet another period of isolation following the transfer from hospital.?

“I’m broken, broken. ?What’s happened to me. ?Why can’t I see you? ?Why are they being so cruel?”?

For months phone calls were painful and distressing for both of us. ?Each separation spiralling her mental wellbeing into further distress and confusion. ?I was under intense emotional strain.?

During this period I also grieving for my father who had died at the end of August, three months after a cancer diagnosis.?As he lived in New Zealand, I couldn’t just pop over to say good-bye in person.?The boarders were closed, and like mum he was restricted to only one visitor too.

Just as I thought things were settling down, my sons caught COVID at school and I couldn’t visit.?The week after the home closed for more than a month because of a COVID outbreak.?I hadn’t seen mum for another six weeks.?I was worried about how mum would be when I eventually would be allowed back in to the home.?

Cycling home from work one wet dark night, I cried “I want my mummy” like a small lost child, tears mingling with the rain on my cheeks.?A few weeks later I went on long term sick from work, emotionally and physically exhausted, unable to function.???

We hoped for a better year in 2022.?Slowly the home opened the doors, first to one named visitor and then a few more, restricted again and so on, until suddenly, in March, we could all go.?My sons could hug their grandma for the first time in six months.?Even better, we could take her outside in the wheelchair.

But now mum lies immobile waiting for the world to come to her.?She no longer walks.?During the home closures weren’t able to support her rehabilitation, and the carers didn’t have time.? They had to deal with her screaming for me day in day out for six weeks.

Each time I visit now it is “a miracle”, and I answer the same old questions ad infinitum.?“You are in a nursing home.” “North Bristol. “Five minutes from where I work.”?“Yes, I will come again.” “No, you haven’t been abandoned.”

The emotional strain of managing her anxiety is ongoing, and I try not to think of her lying alone not knowing where she is when I am at work, or out with my family.?I feel guilty I am not there every day, and when I don’t have the energy to pop in after work.?Each visit she asks when she can die, although she doesn’t want to die when I am there. ?It is so very sad to end your life in this way.?

There is a purpose for writing and publishing this very personal story. I want raise awareness that mum is one of many, many people, who have suffered imprisonment and isolation since the start of COVID within the care system.?Not having visits from loved ones has seriously affected their mental health, worsening symptoms of anxiety, and hastened declining cognition for those people suffering dementia.?Relatives and friends have been traumatised by separation too.

But there is some hope that this deprivation of contact cannot be allowed to happen again.?The organisation Rights for Residents has been fighting hard for mum and me, and all those others who similarly have suffered.?

On Thursday 27th October, between 2pm and 5pm, Gloria’s Law will be debated by Parliament in the main chamber. ?Gloria’s Law would enable at least one nominated person visiting rights to their loved one living in a care home during any future COVID outbreak within the home.?There is only one opportunity for this debate and it has to be won.

If you feel moved by my story, or the stories of other families with relatives in care, please do support this campaign by writing, phoning or tweeting your Member of Parliament this week asking them to support Gloria's Law.

You can read more about Rights for Residents’ campaign on their website.

Remember, this could be you one day in the future.

Thank you.?

Juliet Jain

Contact: [email protected]

Please note this article is entirely my own view point, and is not connected to, or seeking to represent the views of my employer.

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