To me staying connected with my family is very important especially as my mum who is in her late 70,s and still lives in Scotland and I have not seen her in nearly a year, I was meant to go and see her in April but before this could happen we went into lockdown, I was so worried about her.
My mum has a mobile so we talk every day, my mum can only make calls with this mobile as she is not techno savy. Trying to get my mum to purchase a smartphone so that we can video call has been fun and met with I only need to call I do not know how to video call. I have even learned my husband to video call and this has also been a laugh and fun teaching him as we learned together
When I call my mum daily she tells me how fed up she is and how isolated she feels as she cannot meet her friends on a Saturday to go to her bingo and also how she misses having coffee with my younger brother, this makes me feel upset and then I think about the people we serve and how they cannot understand why they are not seeing their parents and cannot understand why mum is not visiting weekly and this has made me think about how we can support them to maintain these precious family ties, modern technology is brilliant and let's support the people we serve to use this technology more and to stay connected with the important people in their lives.
Sharon Haist
