Our response to ‘do not resusitate orders’ in care homes during Covid-19

“We are shocked at the recent findings reported by The Telegraph on Sunday 23 August 2020, that care home staff were ordered to change do not resuscitate plans without discussion with residents, their family members or nursing staff during the Covid-19 pandemic. Our hearts go out to those who lost their lives and to their loved ones, whose grief may now be compounded. We stand in solidarity with the care workers who had to make impossible choices and we applaud the courage of those who refused to implement the blanket DNR status.

Older people must be treated with dignity and respect, with all the richness and fullness of any human life. Shared Lives care, and Homeshare, provide supportive shared living for older people and others with support needs, offering more cost-effective services commissioned and often delivered by local authorities. While Shared Lives is rated as the highest quality and safest form of social care there is, behind the statistics, lies the strength of mutually supportive relationships between people who have chosen to share home and life together.

Every person deserves access to formal and informal support and the warmth of close, family-style relationships we all need. We demand that the way older people are treated, the options provided to them for support, and the way they are talked and thought about, be radically overhauled now.”

Alex Fox OBE, CEO Shared Lives Plus