Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to enable access to weekly covid-19 testing for relatives of care home residents to facilitate safe visiting.

We recognise how important it is to allow care home residents to safely meet their loved ones, especially for those at the end of their lives. We appreciate the particular challenges visiting restrictions pose for people with dementia, people with learning disabilities and autistic adults, amongst others, as well as for their loved ones.

We have provided guidance on how providers can support visiting as part of the Adult Social Care Winter Plan, setting out tightened infection prevention and control measures to enable visits to continue safely.

Further to this we are working up proposals to run a pilot for specific visitors to care homes who provide regular close personal care which is aligned to residents' needs and visit multiple times a week. We will work with clinicians and stakeholder groups to develop this with an aim to launch the pilot in early November.