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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » A PBer lobbies the government over not being able to see his mother who is in a care home
Care Home Visitor Rules: constructive suggestions for change
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It would not surprise me if being told they can't see their family and may never see them again will be in its own right causing "excess deaths" in care homes. An oft-remarked statistic is how often an elderly person can die within months of their husband or wife dying, they give up and die of a broken heart. Many in care homes who haven't seen their families for months must be in a similar situation.
Tragic, absolutely tragic and my heart goes out to anyone affected.
Foreign affairs is the one area where the President has broad latitude as defined by the constitution. You might love - or hate - President Trump, but you cannot deny that he or his predecessors has complete freedom to make friends with the North Koreans or whatever.
You are allowed to object to his (or Reagan or Bush or Clinton or Obama's) foreign adventures. But those are within the powers of the President.
So, I'm not sure what you are objecting to here.
Edit - redirected sympathies to @Stocky
Firstly, there is the erosion of the American political system and the extension of Presidential power. Presidents get to issue Executive Orders. But historically the limits of those orders have been pretty narrow: things over which the Executive has power, as bounded by the constitution and by the laws enacted by Congress.
President Trump, as in the case of the repeal of Section 230, has essentially rode roughshod over this. He is repealing part of an Act of Congress by Presidential decree. His lawyers will have told him this is unconstitutional, and will inevitably end up being overthrown by the Supreme Court.
But that's OK. Because until the case gets there in 2021 or 2020, he's effectively changed the law. This is incredibly pernicious. It makes the votes for Congressmen and Senators even more worthless than now.
Secondly, there is his disregard for truth. Many politicians disassemble and - from time-to-time - lie. There are exceptions, honourable people like Mrs Thatcher for example (or - for that matter - Jim Callaghan).
But by and large, Politicians will say whatever they think they can get away with without directly lying. Look at Clinton. He lied over Monica Lewinski. But he went to extraordinary lengths to avoid direct lying. Indeed, his "I did not have sexual relations with that women" line was after his lawyer sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee outlining what sexual relations was and was not. Lying? Effectively, sure. But at the same time, he did not have complete disregard for the truth.
President Trump is not like that. From his ridiculous boasting about how doctors are amazed by how much he understands, to his birtherism, he cares not one jot for the truth. He says what will minimise the trouble he is in right now.
Thirdly, there is his behaviour. The President of the United States is President of the whole United States. He is not President of who voted for him.
And he needs to accept that with that comes scrutiny. And yes, a lot of that scrutiny will come from the Left wing press.
But Obama and his Press Secretary accepted questions from Fox News. They did not accuse Fox News of treason when Fox news ran commentators who spread the birther story.
In all these ways, President Trump has made the US, in little ways, a little worse.
I mean he was a vegetarian, for god's sake.
The blanket restriction on access to care homes made some kind of sense - until we discovered that Covid patients were being discharged from hospital into homes as a matter of government policy.
A period during which access was severely restricted owing to the enormous pressures on staff, and the difficulty of making the extra time to manage access safely, is entirely understandable, too.
But there has to come a point, as Fishing sets out so clearly, where the harm done to elderly residents by isolation from their loved one has to be weighed against such considerations.
I don't really blame care home staff, as I have seen the pressures they work under, and witnessed the genuine exhaustion and trauma many have suffered, but we are surely now far enough into this crisis for something to have been done to address this ?
You are right. The problem is that care homes are (now) risk averse. If they were to not obey government guidelines and (for whatever reason) CV-19 was to get into the home, it could rip through it, killing a quarter of the residents.
The home would get sued, and probably go out of business.
The problem is that you can't get waivers from *everyone* at the home. You might get them from 75%, but there'll always be a few that won't (or can't) sign. The legal overhang is massive.
The owners of the home have made the decision - inhumane but understandable - that government guidelines must be followed to the letter.
I agree with you.
The care home near me are doing outside visits so I'm not sure it is strictly forbidden.
EDIT -
@Stocky rather - thought it was exactly your issue!
Awful I hope things change soon.
@Stocky - I hope you get a positive response.
Some will be subject to Deprivation of Liberty orders under the Mental Health Act.
These can be challenged or reviewed, but it is a time consuming process.
https://www.scie.org.uk/mca/dols/at-a-glance#what-is
"Care providers don't have to be experts about what is and is not a deprivation of liberty. They just need to know when a person might be deprived of their liberty and take action."
His style is very very different, but the substance? par for the course.
I certainly found myself in a similar position when I was a member of the Conservative Party. I was a member, activist, and voted Conservative for many years. As the years went on I realised that a large number of the activists were xenophobic and racist. To deny that is just silly. It was one of the main reasons I ceased to be a member.
I'd actually go the other way and put care homes into a temporary state of level 5 alertness so that any remaining transmission is isolated so that residents are at least able to interact with each other. I'd also look at rapid testing machines and isolation friendly visits with specific walkways and rooms which are sterilised after use. I think these meetings should be done on a personal risk basis by the resident and the families, both would need to sign waivers to indemnify the care home, staff and the NHS from liability should anyone get the virus.
On the other side I think we've got to loosen restrictions on the wider population and hope that people use the judgement to stay out of contact with vulnerable groups.
Meanwhile, in the House of Follies:
https://twitter.com/DrHannahWhite/status/1267843862049013760?s=20
And at all times, the fifth principle of the Mental Capacity Act, that any decision made in a person’s best interests must be the least restrictive of their rights and freedoms, should be borne in mind...
Is your mother in the home voluntarily, with the capacity to make her own decisions (in which case the act doesn't apply - though the principles it includes are good ones) ?
https://twitter.com/AlexInAir/status/1267851829540519937?s=20
Dr David Katz' risk segmentation has different high-risk based groups – those at high-risk due to age/morbidity etc and those who work with and/or meet such people.
Those that are at low risk and don't meet high-risk groups are in the lower groups and can largely get on with their lives.
This seems to me to be a clear way forward.
If you are a 29-year-old slim female, who never has cause to enter a care home and who distances from your shielded parents/grandparents, why on earth should you be under lockdown? It's senseless.
If you are 35, female, and fit and slim what do you think your chances of hospitalisation from CV-19 are?
I'm sorry but its almost like I'm in a political version of 'from Ladette to Lady' with Marjorie RCS in charge of the Acme school of Presidential etiquette.
all this stuff is worse than the Bay of Pigs? Worse than trying to overthrow the government of Cuba?
Worse than Iran Contra?
Worse than Watergate, bugging the headquarters of your main political opponents?
Worse than Vietnam, worse than Napalm and the deaths of countless civilians?
And what about the enormous lies the American people must have been told about all of these escapades, never mind Iraq.
Trump doesn't lie more than other presidents, its just he's rubbish at it. Why? he's not a politician. That's why he's there.
First name Donald, strangely enough.
Mussolini is vile. He wants to make the trains run on time. Making trains is now by definition vile. And so is everyone who wants trains to run on time.
If they wanted to pad the stats they could add all the antibody and surveillance numbers into "people" also - could add 30k that way, but have chosen to count them as zero.
Why are you so willing, Topping, to cede so much power over of what you think is right and good to those you hold to be most vile?
I have covered this factor in multiple posts now.
I’m not going to cover it yet again.
If teachers, builders, supermarket workers and all the rest can work then MPs should too. They don't neccesarily have to be in the Chamber at the same time of course while we maintain social distancing, but I would think they shouldn't be operating now as they did in April when the country is slowly opening up. I simply don't believe MPs can be as effective if they're sat in their homes than if using their own offices in Westminster. Let's face it they aren't exactly hot desking.
Obviously.
The President is allowed to meddle in other countries affairs.
Domestic vs Foreign.
Virtually stopping all passengers flying into the UK and stopping UK holidaymakers spending their money abroad
2020 the year of staycations
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/02/revealed-coronavirus-death-toll-across-britain-many-excess/
Not ours.
At this rate, maybe suggests they're planning antibody tests for the entire NHS before opening it up - anyone know?
On some levels, I agree with you. Trump is where he is because he is willing to name problems that other politicians won't. He is crap at solutions, and it doesn't mean he names all problems (or even names all the ones he names correctly), and he only mode is partisan division, right/wrong, win/lose. Zero nuance.
Where I part company with you, and agree with Robert, is that quite apart from the unorthodox approaches he takes in presentational terms, he is steadily eroding the institutions, conventions, and checks and balances that make/made all those responsible for those grand political disasters you mention accountable. I have to wonder just how Barr would proceed if Watergate Trump version were to happen during this election season.