Dame Barbara Windsor Moved into Care Home as Alzheimer’s Worsens

Former EastEnders star Dame Barbara Windsor has been placed in full-time residential care after her Alzheimer’s worsened during the lockdown.

Scott Mitchell, her husband of 20 years, has said he had reluctantly acted on the advice of her neurologist, but the decision had still been immensely painful.

He revealed that the 82-year-old actress had actually left the couple’s property in mid-July and moved to a care home in London. He said: “I feel I’m on an emotional rollercoaster. I walk around, trying to keep busy, then burst into tears. It feels like a bereavement.

“It’s always been my biggest fear that one day I would have to take her somewhere and she’d be thinking: ‘Why would he do this to me?’

“That fear has become a reality. It’s something I never wanted.”

Speaking of the day he left Dame Barbara at the home, Mr Mitchell said: “I’ll never forget the feeling of emptiness. I felt sick in the pit of my stomach that I’d left her. I still feel like that.

“By the time I got home and went to bed, I just felt desperately sad. It’s been 27 years since we met and we spent so much of that time in each other’s company. It feels like another chapter has gone.” Scott has decorated her room to make it as welcoming as possible, putting up family pictures as well as a photograph of the actress receiving her damehood from the Queen.

While Barbara was best known for playing the pub landlady on the BBC soap EastEnders, the actress boasts an impressive career in British television. She sprung to fame when she starred in nine Carry On movies during the 1960s and 70s.