"Visiting my family"

I’ve been visiting a relative recently at the  Bellfield Centre at the Stirling care Village and wanted to share some feedback regarding our experience as a family.

On the positive side, the facilities are very nice and the staff we've met have been friendly and welcoming.  The main down-side to our experience has  been in relation to inflexibility in the “flexible”  visiting times.

The NHS Forth Valley website says visiting times are from 11.30 - 8pm which isn’t too bad, although why the time restrictions are really needed I’m not sure?  The rooms are all single accommodation, so surely it would be better to focus on what the person wants in terms of family support and presence?   Added to this we have been asked not to visit between 12pm and 1pm and 4pm and 5pm because these are mealtimes and they want residents to use the social area for meals.

This means that the real visiting times are 11.30am  - 12pm; 1pm - 4pm and 5pm - 8pm, not the advertised 11.30am - 8pm on the website and elsewhere.  As I said before, when you have single room accommodation, I can’t understand why there should be a need for any time restrictions for immediate family.  Also, mealtimes are for many people the time when families come together, so it seems even more unusual to me for the default position to ask families to leave at these times.