Sudbury city councillor pushing for 'designated visitors' at LTC homes
"Designated visitors' would help alleviate pressure on overworked staff, Robert Kirwan says
A Sudbury city councillor says the last COVID-19 lockdown was emotionally unbearable for some seniors in the city's long-term care homes.
Now, Robert Kirwan wants those seven homes to allow designated visitors – a family member or friend who can visit – even during times of lockdown.
The goal, Kirwan said, would be to make sure the residents don't have to deal with four months of isolation again, an ordeal he says took its toll.
"What's more damaging to a person? Social isolation or the disease?," Kirwan said. "I think a lot of people, a lot of experts are realizing that by not having that connection with people that they're familiar with, probably did more damage, health-wise, than the disease may have done."
Kirwan said he's heard of cases where spouses were kept from one another until homes loosed restrictions on visitors this month.
"One of the biggest problems that people had in long term care during the last four months was that they were totally isolated from the people that they used to see all the time," he said.
"For four months they didn't have any visitors there. Their loved ones who used to come in and take care of them all the time were not allowed in."
"What I'm hoping for is that we have an opportunity to have each of the residents designate one or two special visitors that will have the authority and the permission to come in even during a lockdown," Kirwan said.
These designates would require special training and guidelines to follow, something that would likely become expensive. But Kirwan said the decision-makers shouldn't choose money over people's health.
"At some point in time, we have to take a look and say 'well, these are people," he said.
"If we have to lock them down, put them into a room by themselves...staff have got to take care of their medical needs, but they don't have time to sit down and deal with the emotional issues that normally volunteers or family would have done."
"If we allow that, we've got some serious problems and we don't want to go through what we just went through for the last four months."