The phone call nobody expects
The manager rings, awkwardly. Your father spends his days with another resident. They hold hands, they go into the same room, someone saw something. Your mother died two years ago — or worse, she is alive and living at home.
The instinct is to ask the home to keep them apart. That is an understandable reaction. But before you ask, it is worth knowing what can actually be decided, because the answer is narrower than most families assume.
The legal position, which is unusually clear
The Mental Capacity Act sets out how decisions are made for someone who cannot make them for themselves — but it draws an explicit line. There are decisions that cannot be made on another person's behalf at all, and consenting to sexual relations is one of them. No attorney, no deputy, no court and no family member can give or withhold that consent for someone else.
So the framework is not "is this in his best interests?". The framework is: does he have capacity to make this decision? If he does, it is his decision, and it does not become yours because it distresses you. If he does not, the answer is not that somebody else decides for him — it is that the relationship cannot lawfully proceed, and the home has a safeguarding duty.
That distinction is the whole article, and it is why "can you please stop them" is not a request a good home can simply act on.
The question that actually matters: does he have capacity?
Capacity under the Act is decision-specific and time-specific. It is assessed for this decision, now — not in general, and not by reference to a diagnosis. Someone with early dementia may no longer manage a bank account and still recognise a person, seek them out, show consistent pleasure and consistent reluctance. Someone further on may mistake the other person for a spouse, not remember the encounter an hour later, or show fear.
Ask the manager, in writing:
- Has a capacity assessment been carried out for this specific decision, by whom, and on what date?
- Is his behaviour consistent over time — does he seek this person out on different days — or is this disorientation?
- Are there signs of distress in either person — fear, tearfulness, withdrawal, changes in sleeping or eating?
- What has been recorded, and what has been discussed with the other resident's family or representative?
- Has a safeguarding referral been made or considered, and on what basis?
If either person lacks capacity to consent, this stops being a privacy question and becomes a safeguarding one: the home must act, record, and refer to the local authority safeguarding team, and where a criminal offence may have occurred, to the police.
What the home should do — and what it should not
Should: assess capacity properly rather than on the basis of a diagnosis or of family discomfort; keep both people safe; involve families and representatives where there is risk or a decision to be made; document; and respect the privacy of a resident who is not at risk.
Should not: treat it as a disciplinary matter. The wrong responses are recognisable — moving one of them to another room without explanation, punitive levels of supervision, and above all starting a sedative to "settle him". A drug given to suppress behaviour that is not dangerous is a chemical restraint, requires clinical justification and review, and is not a way to resolve a family's embarrassment.
So ask that question too: "Has any medication been changed since this was raised?" It is uncomfortable and it is the one to ask.
If your mother is still alive
This is the most painful version and it has no technical solution. The home is not a moral guardian, and no one can direct it to enforce fidelity.
What you can ask for is concrete and limited: that your mother is not exposed to the situation during visits, that time together happens in private space rather than the lounge, and that nobody relays it to her in a corridor. That is a request about privacy and organisation, and decent homes accommodate it.
On the rest, the clinical literature and long experience point the same way: in advanced dementia a new attachment is almost never a choice against someone. It is the need for a familiar presence in a world that has become unreadable.
What to do as a family
- Agree a position between siblings before speaking to the home. Four relatives making contradictory demands paralyses any manager.
- Separate what hurts you from what harms him. They are different things, and only the second is a reason to intervene.
- Ask for a best-interests meeting about the surrounding decisions — where he lives, room arrangements, how visits are handled. Those are decisions that can be made in his best interests, even though the relationship itself is not.
- Put your requests in writing, so they survive a change of manager.
When the home is the problem
If the response was to separate them by authority, move your father without explanation, or sedate him, you have learned something about the home rather than about the situation. A place that handles a relationship between two older people this way handles everything else the same way.
Your escalation routes are the home's complaints procedure, the local authority safeguarding team, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, and CQC, for whom dignity, privacy and person-centred care are fundamental standards.
And if you have concluded you want a different home and do not have another round of calls in you, that is the part we do. Tell us the area, your parent's needs and what went wrong here, and you get a shortlist worth calling, for £69. If you don't receive at least 3 homes matching the area and criteria you gave us, we refund you in full. Start here
This article is general information for families, not legal or medical advice. Capacity assessments are for the professionals involved, and safeguarding procedures differ across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. If you believe someone is at risk of harm, contact the home's manager and your local authority safeguarding team without delay. Curalune does not allocate beds and does not guarantee availability.
