Herbert and Audrey Goodine will be separated during the festive season after authorities ruled that they must live in separate care homes

For decades, Herbert and Audrey Goodine have celebrated Christmas together, setting out decorations and preparing gifts. This year the elderly Canadian couple will be forced to spend part of the season apart for the first time in 69 years, after provincial authorities determined that they required different levels of home care.

Calls for end to 'inhumane' separation of elderly couples being moved into care Read more

Earlier this month, a health assessment found that 91-year-old Herbert Goodine’s health was deteriorating and said he would have to be moved out of the special care facility where he had lived with his wife Audrey, 89, for more than three years.

The couple’s daughter, Dianne Goodine Phillips, said she was informed about the impending move on Friday in an email. “I read this message over several times in disbelief of how can anyone be so cold and cruel to do this a week prior to Christmas,” she wrote on social media.

The New Brunswick department of social development gave her a few options; she could send both of her parents to another care home three hours away – far from their friends and family – or have her father sent alone to a home a 30-minute drive from where he was currently living, Phillips told Global News.

She instead asked that her father be allowed to stay where he was until the end of the week. A provincial representative then forced her parents to decide, said Phillips.

The decision weighed heavily on them. “When talking to my parents yesterday I listened to my mother weep and I could hear my father in the background,” said Phillips. “My mother said ‘Christmas is over for us now and this is the worst Christmas that we will ever have. Why could they not have waited till after the holidays.’”

On Monday, Herbert and Audrey kissed and bade a tearful goodbye as they prepared to sleep in separate beds for the first time in decades. Audrey stood by the window, watching as her husband was driven to his new home.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Herbert Goodine, 91, was informed he must leave the care facility where he lives with his wife Audrey Goodine, 89, and move into a nursing home. Photograph: Dianne Goodine Phillips

The issue, said Phillips, was not the decision but the timing. While still in early stages, her father’s dementia had progressed and he had broken some of the rules at the facility, including turning off a door alarm so that he could step outside to retrieve his wife’s ornamental plant.

“I don’t have a problem with higher level of care. I had a problem with how it was rolled out … Why could this not have waited until after Christmas?” Phillips asked. “It’s mentally and emotionally hard on them. To me, it’s senior abuse.”

Phillips said she was eventually hoping to find a home that can accommodate both of her parents. Until then, her father has been forced to adjust to his new place. “He said to me before I left, he said, ‘Look where they’ve put me … I’ll miss holding your mother’s hand in bed when I go to sleep,’” she told CTV News.

The association that represents special care homes in the province said the decision was based on safety concerns, pointing to the fact that special care homes are not equipped with locking systems.

“With dementia, if we get into a situation here where somebody is wandering out the front door and we don’t have a coded system, then really their safety is at risk,” said Jan Seely. “Nobody wants to read in the paper that a senior has gone missing.”

New Brunswick’s department of social development said it was aware of the situation but would not comment on the details of the case. “If it’s determined that a senior needs additional care or that their safety is potentially in jeopardy, the department works with the resident and family members to facilitate a move to an appropriate home,” said a spokesperson for the department.

“Individuals who require a higher level of care than what can be provided in special care homes are moved to where their needs can be more appropriately met, such as in a nursing home or a memory care home.”

The Goodines will still be able to spend part of the season together; the couple is planning to spend Christmas Day at their daughter’s home. Hours after leaving his wife, Herbert said he was eager to see her again. “You don’t know how close we are,” he told the CBC. “And always was.”