Daughters Fight to Care for their Mothers

Unlock Care Homes has been set up by Amanda and Jane. If you are struggling with care home access, join our group, campaign to make it a legal right for families to have safe access to loved ones. What does safe access look like? See the example of Dawn Bunter, Care Home Manager, Iceni Heights Residential Home

Why did we need to start our Unlock Care Homes campaign? Read how sheer frustration and horror got us here

Amanda from Unlock Care HomesAmanda Hunter studied Social Policy at Bristol University and has long taken an interest in adult social care. She is a member of the Social Innovators and Disruptors initiative launched by https://ihm.org.uk/ and is passionate about social care reform. Since her own mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2015, Amanda has also become a champion of Alzheimer’s research and dementia advocacy groups. Before the pandemic, she worked as an English teacher and translator.

 

Help Us – Survey Questionnaire 

Please take a few minutes to complete our first survey on care home visiting experience. This will help us to get a better picture of which care homes and care home providers are allowing or denying visits, as well as information on the duration and frequency of visits. Subsequent surveys will follow.
The information you provide will remain anonymous. We may contact you via messenger or email to speak to you further about your answers. This will enable us to offer more relevant advice and support. Please note, we are a tiny team of volunteers, so until we have more active members who can help with this, the degree of support we can offer will be fairly limited.
 
 Click link to Survey here 

Unlock Care Homes Supporters’ Survey

Jane of Unlock Care Homes campaignJane Smith worked for over 40 years in NHS hospital pharmacy as Medication Safety Officer and Service Improvement manager.

She led a team in 2007 taking part in the Safer Patients Initiative (SP12). Her work focused on reducing harm from anticoagulants, reducing the incidence of missed doses, increasing the re-use of patients own drugs.

Her team’s work was shortlists for 13 national awards and won Hospital Patient Safety Award, 2016. Her work was recognised by the award of the Fellowship of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (2015).

Since retiring in 2019, and before lockdown, Jane spent up to 3 hours a day helping her mum in the care home. During lockdown she trained to become a COVID vaccinator.  

Jane is married with a grown up son.

https://twitter.com/judo_jane/status/1368595489092997122?s=20

Jane Saw her mother on Mother’s Day due to a Daily Mail article about her care home experience. A phone call from a journalist made the Windmill Care Home briefly relent