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Several municipalities acknowledge that they have introduced an illegal stop to visit homes for the mentally disabled, VG reports. The reason is that they misunderstood the guidelines of the Norwegian Health Directorate that were issued on March 14.
VG revealed on Sunday that 133 municipalities introduced a visitor strike for more than 2,400 people in residences and housing associations in March. The goal was to prevent residents from being exposed to the coronavirus. In the municipality of Oslo, it is confirmed that 209 residents with developmental disabilities were introduced to stop visiting.
– We see in hindsight that it is very unfortunate that a basically vulnerable group is impeded in their social contact in their own home, writes the director of the Nursing Home Agency Heidi Engelund to VG.
In a letter, the Norwegian Health Directorate writes that the visit was illegal and that they take responsibility for the guidelines not being clear enough.
– If we had understood how they could be misinterpreted, of course we would have done things differently. The guidelines were not clear enough and municipalities did not read them well enough, department director Helga Katharina Haug at the Norwegian Health Directorate tells VG.
The message from the Norwegian Health Directorate arrived on March 14 and read the following:
«To protect vulnerable patients and users from infection, it is now necessary to have access control and a general stoppage of visits in all public and private health and care institutions in the country, as well as in common areas of the residences, etc. The measures must include all visitors, including relatives of residents and patients. ‘
Housing for the mentally disabled is not described as institutions, so the measures did not apply to them. This is said to have led to the misunderstanding which meant that several nursing homes that should not have had a visitor strike still received it.
