During the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreaks in Toronto, Canada, families of residents of long-term care settings were significantly restricted in their visiting. Social workers and other staff had to be creative in order to support families, to keep them informed and involved. The research described here was conducted in order to understand families' experiences and evaluate the effectiveness of social work interventions during the SARS visiting restrictions. Focus groups were conducted with spouses and adult children of residents of a large long-term care facility, to examine how they experienced the visiting restrictions and the facility's attempts to mitigate distress caused by the restrictions, including interventions by social workers and others. Participants described the impact on themselves and their worries about the well-being of their relatives during the time when families, friends, and privately paid caregivers could not visit the facility.

While there were problems and issues common across relationship contexts, intervention strategies that were essential for optimizing client care and wellbeing were specific to resolving relationship conflicts in one or more of the identified relationship contexts.