Coronavirus crisis is now exposing our social care emergency – Jayne Dowle

Elderly people do exist and they live amongst us. As Boris Johnson’s government attempts to deal with the spread of the virus – which has now struck right at the heart of his Government with his own Health Minister, Nadine Dorries, confirmed as Westminster’s first reported case – he has promised to “prioritise the needs of the vulnerable and the elderly”.

How his vow will play out will say a lot about his ability to follow through on bluff and bluster. It is overshadowed by emerging evidence that Covid-19 is known to be most virulent in older people – data from China on the first 44,000 cases reported there shows that the mortality rate amongst those aged 80 and over is nearly 15 per cent, and eight per cent among those aged 70 to 79.

In a more sinister twist, there have been mutterings that hospitals may be forced to prioritise intensive care beds for younger and fitter people who have a stronger chance of recovery.

Where does that leave the thousands of older people living in care homes? Or reliant on a precarious network of carers, day-care services run by voluntary organisations and family members, friends and neighbours, who may fall sick themselves and be forced to self-isolate for up to 14 days? Potentially, in a more dangerous position than ever.

I won’t need to remind you that the so-called Green Paper on social care, promised in the Budget three years ago by former Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has still not materialised.

More recently, in January this year, Mr Johnson was forced to backtrack on his own pre-election reassurance that he had a social care plan packaged up – and ready to go – “so that people get the care they need in their old age but won’t have to sell their homes to pay for it”.

Rather than the urgent reform we expected, he indicated that his Government would “get it done this Parliament”. That’s a five-year deadline. Hardly the ready-to-go solution we were expecting.

Current events may hasten his approach. As it stands, 1.5 million elderly people are not getting the care and support they need. In the past five years, more than 1,600 residential and nursing homes have closed in the UK.

And post-Brexit, we face an unprecedented shortage of care home staff; it’s believed that one in 11 care workers comes from an EU country, and there are 122,000 vacancies in the sector.

Put these two figures together, add in the stringent controls likely to restrict the future employment of overseas staff and you have a crisis growing larger by the day.

Literally, Mike Padgham, chair of the Independent Care Group in York and North Yorkshire and owner of Saint Cecilia’s care home in Scarborough, warns that the shortage of staff, coupled with the demands placed on resources by the spread of coronavirus, is creating a perfect storm of pressure.

He points out that his kitchen workers are already taking sensible precautions by stocking up on tinned goods, bottled water and essentials such as flour and sugar.

However, Mr Padgham says the biggest challenge will come if any of his staff test positive for the virus and are forced to take time off work to self-isolate: “We might go out round the streets and ask people if they’d volunteer to help out in the short term to overcome the problem.”

He says he has been inspired by former Cabinet minister Margaret Beckett who hopes that coronavirus could forge a new kind of community spirit and bring the country together.

A noble aim. However, if we are indeed called upon to do our bit, it shouldn’t be an excuse to let the Government off the hook any longer. No one knows for sure how many volunteers there already are in the NHS, helping patients, serving meals and spending valuable time in care settings.

We can’t predict the eventual effect of Covid-19, and the last thing we should do is ramp up talk of disaster. I will spare you a detailed picture, but the potential outcome is alarming and distressing.

And what we can say is that this virus will cause serious, life-or-death questions to be asked about the way we look after our most vulnerable citizens. Given this, coronavirus must become the short, sharp shock that the Government needs to accept the fact that the time for excuses is history; social care is an urgent case.