Care home deaths

Lies and secrets

L

We had the same or even worse situation in Swedish care homes where they even refused oxygen to the vulnerable elderlies having problems breathing. . . oxygen was a too complicated and possibly dangerous procedure to be trusted to the care home nurses.

C

My 94yr old nan was hospitalised. She’d also tested positive but wasn’t too poorly - no breathing issues just temperature- I spoke to her by phone and she was distressed and felt alone with no visitors allowed in hospital. So they sedated her and put her in end of life plan!

She died several days later - I was allowed to visit at the end, she was unconscious, breathing fine but with no intervention she was allowed to dehydrate to death.

She didn’t die of Covid she died of a policy of euthanasia. She was always afraid of hospitals as she believed they took away your control and were places to die… I’d tried to persuade her they were there to look after you and make you better - but in the end very sadly she was right.

I’m shocked and disillusioned by all this too John

Care homes in Scotland

Shelagh McCall KC, representing bereaved relatives

Residents may have been “neglected and left to starve”

Blanket ban on visitors

Phone calls “went unanswered over days and sometimes weeks”

Relatives, treated “with disdain” questions “fobbed off”

Families told relatives were fine “only to get a sudden hurried phone call that they were dying”

Relatives reported, “a significant deterioration of their loved ones’ physical and mental health”

“was nothing to do with Covid 19”

“some suspect that their loved one was suffering from neglect, dehydration and starvation”

“That residents may have been neglected and left to starve, that families are not sure they were told the truth about their relative’s cause of death, that the usual process for the certification of death was departed from.”

“We anticipate that the inquiry will hear that people were pressured to agree to sign do not resuscitate notices, and that people were not resuscitated even though no such notice was in place,”

Ms McCall, inquiry must investigate potential violations of Article 3, Human Rights Act prohibiting “torture, inhuman and degrading treatment”.

“Relatives will speak of their loved ones lacking food, water, and hygiene. That there was inappropriate, inadequate, absent or delayed medical attention,”

S

My dad with Alzheimer's was diagnosed with "covid" in 2020 while in a care home. A few weeks later I was allowed to see him as they said he was not eating.

When I saw him he looked like a human skeleton. He was shut in his room without food or water(Liverpool Pathway), and while I was there he had a ten second phone consultation with a GP, when a" care "worker pointed her mobile phone at my dad.

"He looks happy enough!" was the GP's verdict! My dad died a couple of days later; I call it murder!

V

I kept my 80 yo parents isolated in their homes until omicron dominated. They took vitamin D,C and zinc. They were not vaccinated. Their inevitable illness then was mild.

Medical records “missing or incomplete” for fatalities

Residents, forced into agreeing to do not resuscitate plans

Evidence would “point to a systemic failure of the model of care”.

Scottish Covid Bereaved

Discharging untested hospital patients into care homes,

“ultimately a death sentence for the elderly”

March, April and May 2020

113 hospital patients, tested positive, transferred to care

3,061 transferred from hospital to care homes without beige tested

Covid allowed to enter care homes “spread like wildfire”

T

The same thing happened in Ontario, Canada. People stood spending hours outside of their loved one's windows of the care homes. Helplessly saying things like, "I love you and even final goodbyes through the glass to their elderly, helpless parents. Beyond disgusting.

Lord Stevens, led NHS England until 2021

Matt Hancock,

wanted to decide “who should live and who should die” if hospitals became overwhelmed

“The secretary of state for health and social care took the position that in this situation he – rather than, say, the medical profession or the public – should ultimately decide who should live and who should die.

Fortunately, this horrible dilemma never crystallised.”

“I felt that we are well served by the medical profession, in consultation with patients to the greatest extent possible, in making those kinds of decisions.”