Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether it is his policy that local authorities should be facilitating social contact visits in adult social care settings in the same way as those visits are being facilitated in care homes.

Maintaining opportunities for visiting and spending time together is critical for the health and wellbeing of people in care homes and wider adult social care settings. It is important to recognise the diversity of these environments and the different needs of the people who live there. For these reasons, the care homes guidance is not directly transferable to other settings.

On 30 March, we published an update to our visiting guidance for supported living and extra care. Many of the principles are also relevant to other types of supported housing. This guidance sets out the default position that visits should be supported and enabled wherever it is safe to do so and explains how providers can work with the people they support to develop arrangements for visiting that mitigates these risks.