Caring and staying in touch from a distance

Visits are important to care home residents, and to their families and friends (who are referred to here as ‘informal carers’). Caring doesn’t stop when people go into care homes, and family and friends provide important social contact, and ongoing care and support. Visiting also provides an opportunity for informal carers to ‘keep an eye’ on the quality of the care and support provided, enabling them to raise issues and ask questions.

Our previous research on ‘distance carers’ (people who provide help, care and support from a distance – Distance caring report and Experiences of Distance Carers) indicated that informal carers living at a distance can find it hard to keep in touch with the person they support when apart. This is because not everyone can use the phone or technology independently, and not everyone has someone on hand to support them – whether living in their own home or a care home.

Background to the research

As care homes closed to visitors at the beginning of the pandemic, all informal carers of care home residents (including spouses, relatives, friends) became distance carers. Whether they lived close to the home or a long way away, all had to manage without face-to- face visits, and find new ways to stay connected and keep in touch. This provided an opportunity (albeit an unwelcome one) to find out more about informal carers’ experiences of staying in touch with care home residents.

This study

In this research we wanted to learn what worked well for informal carers, what difficulties they faced and any barriers that were experienced, as well as what we could learn for the future.

To understand this we carried out an online survey from July – December 2020, with participation from 90 carers across the UK. This included carers of older people, people living with dementia, people with learning disabilities and/or autism, and disabled people. This diversity was important, as much research has focused on care homes for older people.

Findings

The six main findings of the research are summarised in the table below:

Informal carers tried different ways of staying in touch, and often employed great creativity. A lot of attention has been given to the importance of technologies as a way of staying in touch, however, people also used more familiar ‘low tech’ methods, such as the phone,  posting letters, cards and gifts, and talking to someone else, such as a staff member or manager. Their use of many different and diverse ways of staying in touch increased during the pandemic, as shown below:

One of the most important messages from the research is that all of these methods of staying in touch work well for some people, but not for others. This highlights the importance of a personalised approach to staying in touch, using the ways which work best for residents, their families and friends. For some residents, only in-person visits really worked, and the absence of these was sorely missed. Carers felt that not having visits had affected residents’ wellbeing, that they became lonely, and that their health deteriorated at this time.

Staff support was critical, as many care home residents needed help and support to stay in touch, including helping with setting up calls, reading and writing cards and letters, as well as helping them to hold conversations with their relative/friend. Some informal carers reported receiving good support; in other services there was little support for remote contact. In some instances staff themselves did not have skills or confidence in using technologies, and care homes did not always have good Wi-Fi access.

Looking to the future

The pandemic has been challenging for everyone connected with care homes, including residents, their families and friends, and staff. Many are still feeling the impact of restricted visiting and uncertainty about future waves of COVID and lockdown policies, and many care homes are experiencing time demands and staff shortages. Although the pandemic will eventually pass, lessons from this time will remain relevant in the future. Informal carers who live at a distance, people whose relatives and friends are placed in out of area services, and carers who are ill, will all benefit from good support to enable them to remain connected at times when they are unable to visit in person. Care homes may also have to close at times (although for shorter periods) in response to infections. Experiences during the pandemic have highlighted the importance of connections with people outside the home (who are often more than ‘just visitors’). There is a need for further research to explore the characteristics of care homes which successfully facilitate remote contact, and the resources available to them. This research suggests that care homes which support remote contact have staff who are skilled and confident in using technology and in supporting residents to interact with others – and provide staff with the training, time and encouragement to enable them to facilitate this. Such care homes also appreciate the importance and value of carers who live at a distance and/or cannot visit frequently. Further, although technologies have received much attention during the pandemic, different approaches worked best for different people; care homes which are willing to explore a range of methods to enable residents to stay in touch, and which take a personalised approach to communication, will be those best able to find effective and meaningful solutions to staying in touch.

Full information about the research and details of the findings are available in our report at Caring from a Distance