Visiting Rights and Care Supporters: What Care Homes Need to Know

For much of the pandemic, care home visiting was severely restricted, and the harm this caused to residents — isolation, rapid decline, and families shut out of a loved one's final months — has left a lasting mark on both regulation and public expectation. The Health and Care Act 2022 introduced a legal duty designed to make sure that kind of blanket restriction can never happen in the same way again, giving residents a right to receive visits, including from a specifically designated "care supporter," even during future outbreaks or periods of heightened infection control.

What the Law Actually Requires

The Health and Care Act 2022 places a duty on CQC-registered care homes to facilitate visits to residents, recognising visiting as fundamental to a resident's health and wellbeing rather than an optional extra to be suspended whenever convenient. This built directly on the widespread public and campaigner pressure — sometimes referred to informally as "Gloria's Law," after a campaign highlighting the harm caused by pandemic-era visiting restrictions — that argued families and close contacts should never again be excluded wholesale from a resident's care, even during a genuine outbreak.

The Care Supporter: More Than an Ordinary Visitor

A central feature of the guidance is the concept of a "care supporter" — someone nominated by the resident (or, where they lack capacity, identified as being in their best interests) to provide regular contact and involvement in their care, similar in spirit to how a parent or guardian is treated in a hospital setting for a child. Crucially, a care supporter's access is intended to continue even during outbreak restrictions or when general visiting is limited, distinguishing them clearly from casual or occasional visitors who may be more limited when infection control measures are in place.

Balancing Visiting Rights With Infection Control

This doesn't mean infection control measures disappear — a home can still take proportionate steps during a genuine outbreak, such as requiring hand hygiene, appropriate PPE, or limiting visits to a resident's own room rather than communal areas. What changed is the assumption behind restriction: visiting should be facilitated and supported wherever safely possible, with restriction the last resort applied only where genuinely necessary and proportionate to the actual risk, rather than a default blanket policy applied to everyone regardless of individual circumstances. This mirrors the same proportionate thinking covered in our guide to outbreak management and infection control — precautions should match the actual risk, not apply indiscriminately.

Identifying and Recording Care Supporters

Good practice involves discussing the care supporter role with residents and families at or soon after admission, as part of the same conversation that establishes wider family involvement in care planning, rather than waiting until an outbreak makes the question urgent. Recording who a resident's designated care supporter is, and making sure this information is easily accessible to all staff (not filed away and forgotten), means the home is prepared to maintain that access consistently, even under pressure.

What Good Visiting Policy Looks Like in Practice

A visiting policy that meets both the spirit and letter of current expectations is written in plain language, explains clearly what happens during an outbreak or other restriction, names the care supporter provision explicitly rather than leaving it implicit, and is communicated to residents and families before it's needed, not discovered for the first time in a crisis. Homes that treat this as a genuine culture shift — visiting as something to protect and facilitate, not a risk to be managed downward by default — tend to handle real outbreak situations with far less conflict and distress than those still operating on old, more restrictive assumptions.

Training Staff to Apply the Policy Consistently

A well-written visiting policy is only as good as how consistently it's applied on the ground, particularly under pressure during a genuine outbreak when a stressed team can default to the easiest option — turning visitors away entirely. Staff need clear, practical training on exactly what the current guidance requires, who qualifies as a care supporter for each resident, and how to apply proportionate infection control measures without slipping into blanket restriction simply because it feels safer or more straightforward in the moment.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a care home ever fully stop all visiting during an outbreak? This should be an absolute last resort, proportionate to a genuine, serious risk, and even then a designated care supporter's access should generally be maintained wherever it can be done safely.

Can a resident have more than one care supporter? Policies vary, but the underlying principle is about ensuring meaningful, consistent contact is maintained — homes should work with residents and families to agree a sensible, practical arrangement rather than applying an arbitrary limit without discussion.

Who decides who a resident's care supporter is? The resident themselves, where they have capacity, or a decision made in their best interests involving family and the care team where they don't.

Getting visiting rights right protects one of the things residents and families value most about care home life. Learnsignal's CPD courses for care staff cover resident rights and family engagement as part of a wider compliance curriculum.