Scots campaigners welcome move towards care home change but 'the fight goes on'
Campaigners have welcomed progress towards enshrining vital care home protections – but warned their fight isn't over.
SNP ministers pledged to change the law to give relatives legal visiting rights in the wake of the pandemic, which saw thousands of elderly people die alone in locked down institutions.
The Sunday Mail has campaigned for Anne's Law alongside Campbell Duke, whose wife Anne died in isolation aged 62 with early onset Alzheimer's disease, for visiting protections to be introduced.
But progress stalled when the government scrapped its plans for a National Care Service and replaced it with the Care Reform Bill.
Now, plans to transform social care will be progressed after the Scottish Parliament approved the Care Reform (Scotland) Bill with the support of 116 MSPs.
Anne's Law will uphold the rights of family and friends to be named as 'essential care supporters' and require care homes to allow visits from them in all but the most extreme circumstances.
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Cathie Russell, from the Care Home Relatives Scotland group, said the Bill's approval was to be welcomed but guidance to support Anne's Law was still to be seen.
She said: "We have worked closely with the Government and MPs from all parties for nearly five years now to try and make sure the brutally inhumane things that happened in 2020 and 2021 don't happen again.
"We were never simply visitors. As husbands, wives, sons, daughters and mothers, we were our loved ones' main carers before and after they went into a care home.
"We must be able to maintain personal contact to love and care for vulnerable relatives as we always did."
Campbell welcomed the move but said there was more still to be done. He said: "It took Government, Parliament and Civic Scotland five years to finally be persuaded to pass legislation.
There remains much work to be done in shaping Codes of Conduct and Regulations to future-proof this legislation. The fight goes on."
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