A daughter has spoken up about the heartbreak of not being able to hug her 87-year-old mother for seven months.

Christine Taylor has not been able to physically touch her mum Catherine Rush or see her without a window pane between them since February.

Her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's five years ago, and three years ago she moved out of her home in Little Lever and into Abbeywood Care Home, Tottington.

Although family members have been able to see Catherine through the window of the care home, communication isn't easy as she doesn't fully understand what is going on due to her condition.

Over lockdown she's missed out on meeting two of her great grandchildren, born this summer, and she hasn't been out of the care home since February.

Mrs Taylor said: "It's like she's a ghost, it feels like she's died already and we've lain her to rest.

"All the conversations we have about her are sad conversations.

"We used to talk about the nice days out she had but now we worry about her all the time, from first thing in the morning to the last thing at night.

"It's as if we are grieving everyday, it's the strangest feeling.

"Her place is completely self-funded and it costs around £700 a week for her to live there.

"I know she receives excellent care there and the staff have been great, there's been no cases there so we're not worried about that aspect.

"But we used to visit her on a rota every single day and we would take her out to places, which I think helped stimulate her and kept her busy.

"Now she's been stuck in the care home for months and hasn't even been able to see any of her new great grandchildren.

"We tried video calls but she just doesn't understand. We've sat outside and seen her through the window but it's very hard to communicate. She gets very confused and upset."

When local lockdown restrictions were enforced Catherine's family couldn't even visit her through the window.

Mrs Taylor said:"It's just been awful, it seems cruel that she's worked hard all her life, and she's paying to live in this home yet she's so isolated.

"It seems very unfair that she's seeing out the end of her life in this way.

"My mum's like a prisoner, she's being deprived of seeing her family and we're being deprived of seeing her.

"I feel like she's being wronged, despite living her life so right.

"I owe it to her to do something about it and I know this is something that affected so many people, Yasmin Qureshi has been very supportive of the issue.

"What I want to be able to do is meet with her in person, even if that's sitting two or three metres away.

"I would happily wear gloves and hold her hand, I'm not asking for hours together, even 15 minutes will do.

"I just want to be able to see my mum."

When there was no sign of visits to care homes being allowed, Mrs Taylor contacted her local councillor Sean Hornby who in turn reached out to Yasmin Qureshi, MP for Bolton South East.

Ms Qureshi has written to the Health Secretary Matt Hancock regarding visits to care homes.

Cllr Sean Hornby said: "I appreciate we are in a very difficult decision but it has to be recognised that people want to visit their loved ones.

"Having visitors improves the quality of lives of those residents greatly.

"It's not cheap for these residents to live in these private care homes so they should put something in place whereby people can see their loved ones.

"Lots of people will just accept what is happening, but it should be changed."