A great-grandmother has been ordered to leave her care home after she allegedly had an “unauthorized” visit with her police officer daughter through an open patio door.
78-year-old Elizabeth Bow, who suffers from dementia, is being evicted from Aspen Hill Village in Leeds after the management accuses her 53-year-old daughter, Denise Hobbs, of not adhering to visiting policy.
“My mum is being punished because I love her and want to visit her,” said Hobbs in an interview.
“I feel like she’s been abandoned.”
Bow’s case is one of the many examples of the impact of restrictions on care home visits since the pandemic, wherein the residents are barred from meaningful contact with their families.
Instead of hugs or holding hands, their interactions with their families were reduced to waving through window of plastic screen, while others depended on “drive-through” visits.
Some were unable to see their loved ones at all.
Bow moved to Aspen Hill on April 29, and was given a room by a patio to allow visitors to speak through the open door and window, and Hobbs, along with her four siblings, would visit everyday during the early stages of the pandemic.
The facility moved to Tier 3 status on September, causing the restrictions on visits to be tighter.
On October 4, Hobbs arrived at the facility for an unsolicited visit and went towards the open patio door, where the nurse and senior carer asked her to leave.
“I burst into tears and asked ‘is she a prisoner now?’ because she hadn’t been out for 39 days,” Hobbs recalled.
Two weeks later, Hobbs was informed that her mother would be evicted.
“The phone call came completely out of the blue,” she said.
Aspen Hill Village had said that their staff had repeatedly warned her family about unauthorized visits, but Hobbs angrily denied this.
“They’ve said that we were repeatedly told, but that is wrong,” she said. “It’s absolutely appalling!”