Coronavirus: Walsall man returns home after unwanted care stay

"I feel like I've got my dad back," Sue Essery said

A man who was moved from hospital to a care home against his family's wishes after testing positive for coronavirus has returned to his own bungalow.

Bob Dunbar, 87, was being treated for pneumonia when his test result emerged last month, but was "written off", his family claimed, to free up the bed.

They had queried his being deemed fit enough to be discharged, and said the decision over where he ended up was taken out of their hands.

They said they had since fought daily.

Mr Dunbar's daughter, Sue Essery, said he had recovered and on Wednesday was back in his own home in Aldridge, Walsall.

"He never wanted to be [at the care home] and when I'd visit he was barely responsive - I thought he'd lost it," she said.

"I've had to fight every day to get him back."

Mrs Essery had promised her late mother that her father would never go into a home.

Mr Dunbar and his late wife Mary to whom daughter Sue Essery made a promise

Mr Dunbar was treated for pneumonia in Good Hope Hospital, Sutton Coldfield, where staff, Mrs Essery said, had deemed him medically fit to be discharged.

The following day, 8 April, he was moved into the nursing home in Bloxwich, Walsall.

But Mrs Essery said she questioned the verdict of hospital staff, citing his chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), respiratory pneumonia, and Covid-19.

He was referred to the Bloxwich site by Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council, which said it did not comment on individual cases.

University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Good Hope, did not respond last month for a request to comment.

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Mrs Essery said: "I think staff are under pressure to accept patients from hospital when they're already stretched as it is."

But she added her father's spirits had improved, saying: "He's so chatty and happy, I feel like I've got my dad back."

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