the times | Wednesday April 8 2020 1GM 25
Comment
Plight of care homes must not be forgotten
Britain has a chance to give some of its most vulnerable people — and those who look after them — far better support
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Twenty-three people were found
dead in a Madrid residence.
There are ways to ameliorate care
homes’ plight. In Belgium, families of
elderly coronavirus patients have
started legal action to ensure their
relatives get places for intensive care
treatment but the majority of frail
octogenarians in Britain would
probably be horrified to take the place
of a young person on a ventilator. As
the 86-year-old Joan Bakewell says in
an interview in The Times today: “If I
was the oldest by far and a younger
person needed a ventilator, I wouldn’t
be fighting for my life over theirs.”
However, dying residents couldperhaps say goodbye to families if
there was more protective equipment
and staff must be provided with PPE,
and be fast-tracked for testing.
Volunteers should sign up to help at
nationalcareforce.co.uk and
grandchildren can write letters and
paint pictures. Arts charities are
already performing outside windows.
Above all, when this is over, the
government must recognise that it is
futile to separate social care from the
NHS — they operate in conjunction.
Care staff need to be better paid
and residential homes should never
again be seen as an afterthought. We
seem to think of ourselves as a
nation that doesn’t care about the
old but the coronavirus has shownus how much we do.
Do Not Resuscitate order forms.
Many have been told informally not
to call an ambulance for those over
75 or expect them to be admitted to
hospital, although NHS England
says there is no national guidance.
Rachel Beckett, chairwoman of
Wellburn, which has 14 homes across
the northeast, says: “With no
guidance, financial or moral support,
we know for now we’re in this on our
own. Our carers, who areoverworked, stressed and being
pushed to the limit, both physically
and mentally, aren’t part of the wider
story.” Agency workers have been
called in but they could become
super-spreaders as they move
between homes. So managers are
appealing for volunteers to sign up to
a national care force while staff self-
isolate or recuperate from symptoms.
In Europe, the devastation
wrought by the virus has caused a
care scandal. France’s retirement
homes, shuttered from the world,
have reported multiple cases of
double-digit death tolls. In Spain,military units had to be dispatched to
disinfect care homes after staff fled.In France, retirement
homes have reported
double-digit death tolls
now, last in the line for testing, they
know they could bring devastation to
their workplace if they pick up the
virus. Or they could catch it while
holding the hand of a dying patient,
who may be desolate without their
family, or in the case of those with
dementia, horribly disorientated.
Sixteen residents at a care home in
Glasgow died in just over a week
after a suspected outbreak of
coronavirus. The patients at the
Burlington Court care home were
not tested for Covid-19 because they
were not admitted to hospital; two
staff members are also undergoing
treatment. It must be horrific toattempt to provide some dignity to
the final moments of so many at
once, acting as surrogate family to
the dying, while also worrying
whether you might bring the virus
back to your partner or children.
Sam Monaghan, chief executive
of MHA, the UK’s largest charity
provider of care for older people, said:
“NHS staff are used to dealing with a
high volume of end-of-life care; social
care staff who develop close personal
relationships with residents over
months and years are not.”
Care staff have often been the last
to receive personal protective
equipment (PPE) despite dealing
with serious cases. Meanwhile
managers are worried that residentsand families are being nudged to sign
T
hese are frightening times
to be in a care home. It’s
incredibly hard not only for
the elderly residents,
deemed to be at high riskand fearful for their lives, but for
their carers too, struggling away
while the focus has been on the
hospitals. Of all the key workers
battling through this pandemic,
residential carers are in a
particularly vulnerable position.
Low-paid, often young and
inexperienced, or immigrants far
from loved ones, they are expected
to fight on the forgotten front line
with little help or medical equipment
and to act as angels when they could
become harbingers of death.
There are more than 400,000
elderly in residential homes across
the country. Everyone applauds the
doctors, nurses, emergency staff,
teachers and shelf-stackers but the
care workers are too easily shunted
to the side and neglected.
Many work long hours on zero-
hours contracts as “unskilled”
workers, helping the elderly to eat,
go to the toilet, bath, brush their hair,
cut their toenails, or in the case of
those with dementia or Alzheimer’s,
encouraging them to connect in
small ways with life. The workload is
exhausting, turnover is rapid and
vacancies were already running at 20
per cent. The pay differential
between care workers with less than
one year’s experience and those with
more than 20 is 15p an hour so they
aren’t rewarded for acquired skills. In
fact, they are often castigated for
being uncaring when the majorityare empathetic and selfless.
Both my parents are in care homes
where the carers have made hugeefforts to make the residents feel as
comfortable as possible, reassuring
them as they nervously self-isolate in
their rooms, feeding them as
nutritiously as they can from limited
supplies and singing with them. For
my father, who has dementia, it’s a
struggle not to be able to roam the
corridors or countryside.
Carers always worry about thewelfare of their beloved residents:
Workers have often
been the last to receive
protective equipment
Alice
Thomson
@alicettimes