Home has come up with great idea

[sortmylifeoutplease]

Relative's home have come up with a great idea for visiting. I haven't seen it yet, but I will be allowed to book in a visit next week. Visitors stay outside, relative is in a room inside with a phone (prison style) and you are separated by Perspex. Maybe they've replaced or adapted a door or window? Obviously I am expecting some hearing issues, but they have made it possible to have some sort of contact. Visitors can also bring other family with. I thought this was a brilliant idea in the current circumstances and am v pleased. Just thought if other homes aren't offering stuff that this might be something to raise with them.

It does sound a bit better and I'm sure it would benefit a lot of people. Just not sure how DMIL would cope with it as she's very, very confused. Like most things though I suppose we'd have to try it and see.

It sounds like a good idea but, depending on the sort of residents they have, it may have limited use. All for of my grandparents ended up in care homes and only one of them would be likely to have benefited from this as the others all had issues that would have made it very difficult - dementia, deafness, speech issues due to stroke etc. Great for those who are capable though.

I can see this would be helpful for some people, but my father would have difficult with handling the phone, and he would have difficulty hearing anything I said on the phone, so I'm not sure that it would help us.

Care home next door to us has this. They put it in in the summer. It's fantastic. It's used a lot. It's a great idea

Care homes round here built on “visiting pods” to allow them to do this. Just a little temporary room built on at a window or french doors. Keeps the visitors out of the cold. Obviously residents stay inside the home and they chat through the window.

My mother’s home has a pod in the corner of the main room so you go in and are separated by plastic like sitting in a plastic box. It’s great except my mother is really deaf and for some reason they’ve put it right by the telly which is usually blaring.

We have this on some of our mental health wards - those on the ground floor!

Glad they're becoming a thing. The hearing aspect isn't great, but I like that they are trying. The other home I have experience of let us speak at a distance through a gated metal fence one time in July or August and then asked us not to do it again as other residents would want to do it too. It seemed pretty "can't do".

We have this on some of our mental health wards - those on the ground floor.

I've got visions of DFIL trying to hoick himself up a ladder every time he wants to see DMIL

Ours allow "window visits" but the window has to be closed. So Dad spends his time trying to prise the window lock off and is worried that I want to tell him something important. In theory we could both speak on our phones, but it takes him both hands (he's convinced he needs to hold the charger cable in place during the call) and all his concentration to use a phone, so having me in plain view would just knock the whole thing sideways.

I'm just going to have to wait until I can be 18inches away form him, kneeling in front of him so I can look up into his face (he finds it hard to hold his head up) so he can lipread and watch my gestures. I just hope he can wait that long.

My mother's home had something similar before they stopped visits again with the current lockdown. My mother (who has no dementia) hated the idea and said she would rather not have visits than have to do it like that, especially in my case as I live a 9-hour round trip away.