Coleen Nolan opened up on Tuesday’s Loose Women about one of the ‘hardest’ decisions her and her family ever made
14:25, 28 Apr 2026Updated 14:42, 28 Apr 2026
Coleen Nolan admitted she was once cruelly trolled over one of the ‘hardest’ decisions her and her family ever made(Image: ITV)
Coleen Nolan admitted she was once cruelly trolled over one of the ‘hardest’ decisions her and her family ever made.
The star, 61, appeared on Tuesday’s Loose Women, where the panellists spoke about the important topic “have you experienced care home guilt?”
This prompted Coleen to reflect on when she and her siblings decided to put their mother, Maureen, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, in a care home after it got to a point where it was too dangerous for her to be left on her own at home. Maureen died in 2007 aged 81.
Coleen said: “I think it’s probably the hardest decision me and my family made with my mum. You know, we looked after her as long as we could, you know, between us. She wanted to stay in a sheltered accommodation, but then that became where it was just too dangerous.
“You know, she was leaving electric kettles on a gas hob and not even noticing, and my brother would go around and there was smoke, and then I’d have her during the day, and then my sister would have her at night.”
Coleen Nolan opened up on Tuesday’s Loose Women about one of the ‘hardest’ decisions her and her family ever made (Image: ITV)
Coleen added: “More and more and more it was getting really, really difficult. You know, she’d get up at three in the morning and we’d have to put double locked doors because she’d think it was daytime and just wander, you know, all those things. Ciara [Coleen’s daughter] was tiny at the time, I think she was three, and she came down one morning and said: ‘Oh mummy, gran’s given me all these sweets’, and it was all my mum’s tablets.
“Now the thing, and they were red, they looked like Smarties. Now luckily Ciara was the child out of all three of my children that never ever put stuff in her mouth. If that had been the boys, they’d have eaten them, but she never did. I was like: ‘Oh, we’ll save them for Grandma,’ and it was just getting more and more.
“She just needed more and more care, and we were working, and we had young kids, and we were doing the best that we could, especially my sisters, my other sisters who lived there at the time. It was the hardest decision ever to even suggest and we let my mum choose, actually.
“The one that we thought was going to be perfect for her because it was all super modern, and it was gorgeous, and it was newly built, she walked in and hated it. She picked one that we wouldn’t have picked but it was her choice. She didn’t quite understand what was happening, to be fair.
The star, 61, appeared on Tuesday’s Loose Women, where the panellists spoke about the important topic “have you experienced care home guilt?”(Image: ITV)
“Now, still living with all this guilt, I cannot tell you the amount of people that trolled us over it. Like, how dare you? Your mum’s brought up all eight of you, and not one of you can look after.
“Yeah, we could. We could all look after my mum, but it wouldn’t be safe. She got the really aggressive form. She had no idea where she was. She needed 24-hour supervision. We still got this guilt, and then we got loads of lovely people, but the amount of people were going, ‘how can you sleep at night?’ and I was like, ‘grand, I’ll tell you how… I don’t sleep at night. None of us do. We cry every night because we’ve had to make this decision.'”
Coleen then pointed out that people who say ‘well I looked after my mum’ tend to be retired whereas she wasn’t retired and had a young family to look after. She added: “My mum would be the first to say, I know, we knew our mum, she’d be the first to say, ‘don’t do that’.
“As I have now said to my children, if I get this, I’ve said, because it’s my biggest fear, put me somewhere nice and walk away, and don’t feel guilty. It doesn’t matter how many times I say that to them, I know they will.
“But I just want them to know, and I want it to be out there, that I have given them permission, because I don’t want them to go through what I went through.”
Loose Women continues on weekdays at 12:30pm on ITV and ITV X.