Plans are being drawn up to help make it possible for more Lancashire care home residents to receive visits from their loved ones – even while the county remains in the grip of the pandemic.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) can reveal that Lancashire County Council is set to distribute £2.2m to care home operators to fund physical modifications to their properties in order to facilitate safe visiting during the ongoing Covid crisis.

The cash could also be used to cover other costs associated with allowing visits – including increased staffing levels and extra cleaning.

Government guidance states that areas in Tiers 2 and 3 of the new system of coronavirus restrictions should limit care home visiting to “exceptional circumstances” – such as when a resident is nearing the end of their life.

Lancashire was placed in the “very high” Tier 3 alert level earlier this month, with the status due to be reviewed after four weeks.

However, the LDRS understands that County Hall is in the final stages of devising a local care home visiting policy which aims to increase opportunities for safe face-to-face contact between residents and their relatives in more routine situations – whatever the wider restrictions in force in the community.

The county council’s cabinet member for adult services, Graham Gooch, said that the aim of the plan is to ensure that – wherever it is safe – residents of Lancashire’s care homes can once again enjoy the most familiar of faces sitting in front of them.

For many, they have gone more than seven months without the thing they look forward to the most.

“It’s having such a drastic effect on people – and some really are going downhill.

“So I want to look at the overall health of those in care homes.

“For most people, this will be their last home and we want them to have some quality of life while they are there – we are not preserving them in aspic.

“At the moment, it’s come down to [allowing visits only] when people are about to draw their last breath – and that’s pretty awful.

“There was a report of a resident in a Scottish care home who is 104 and they won’t let her see her relatives – you just can’t treat people like that,” County Cllr Gooch said.

He added that the policy was likely to involve “buying a lot of Perspex” to install protective screens – something which can be done relatively quickly and simply – but admitted that physical alterations in some homes may be difficult.