"He had his bags all packed,"

my elderly friend told me almost tearfully.
Her brother was recently placed in a nursing home. He has dementia.
The problem is that, sometimes, he seems to be perfectly lucid. He appears to be fully aware - and he wants to go home. He keeps ringing her and asking her to take him home. He keeps ringing other people too. He can still do that - at the moment. 
Yesterday he packed his bags and he had called his brother to come and take him home. His brother, afraid this man would be able to call a taxi and actually get home, had rung the nursing home and asked what was going on.
    "He's fine. He's not going anywhere," they insisted. By then this man had also rung his wife, his sister and his daughter. He had been highly abusive, demanding to be allowed home. On learning all this his brother went to investigate.
Yes, there he was with his bags packed. He was getting more and more agitated.
    "What," his brother demanded, "is going on?"
He was apparently met with a shrug by the inexperienced weekend staff. They had just let him do all this thinking he would "get over it and realise he couldn't go home".
His wife, his daughter and his siblings have simply stopped answering their phones - to everyone - in case it is him. That's worrying and dangerous. 
The nursing home doesn't want to put him in the more secure area "yet". I can understand that but it is making it difficult for everyone.
What I can't understand is why this man was still being allowed to make so many phone calls - more than a dozen in a day. If there is a phone in his room then it should surely be possible to disable it or even remove it. I doubt he can use a mobile phone but, if he can, then it surely be "lost". I doubt anyone wants to stop him making calls while he can but he must spend most of the day doing it. Now, when nobody answers, he is going to be even more confused and anxious.
Dementia is an horrendous thing. You lose the person before the person dies. They are there - but not there. They seem to know - but they don't know. For them and for everyone around them it must be appallingly difficult to live through.
His sister, my friend, is the one who has just had major heart surgery. She is recovering very well but she doesn't need this stress and all I can do is let her talk, listen, provide the occasional meal so that she doesn't need to do that herself and just try to understand. I am just not sure that I do understand though - or that anyone else does either.