Coronavirus response has been compromised by social care inaction – Mike Padgham

I begin by offering my sympathy and condolences to anyone who has lost a loved one to Covid-19 and my thoughts to those who are unwell or anxious about the future.

We have certainly never known anything like this before.

As we head into the frightening and unknown world of the outbreak, it has never been more vital that we come together to care for older and vulnerable people in the hard days ahead.

Social care providers are trying their very best to keep people – including many at greatest risk from Covid-19 – safe and well. It is worth remembering that social care, already looks after some 400,000 people in residential care, almost three times the number of people in hospital beds, and 640,000 people in their own homes, too.

Many care providers, including ourselves, have asked relatives and friends not to 
visit their loved ones to cut down the risk of the virus entering homes. This was before the Government announced similar advice.

Most people have accepted this course of action without question, understanding that it is in the best interest of their loved one and all other residents and staff.

Overall, care providers are working together with the Department of Health and Social Care, and with local authorities and clinical commissioning groups, to tackle Covid-19. This is a time for concerted and joint action against a common enemy.

From a social care perspective, we have been warning for a long time that the sector was on the verge of collapse and that a major issue of some sort could put devastating strain upon us. Whilst we might have thought it would be something like a severe flu outbreak, we could never have expected it to be something as serious and far-reaching as Covid-19.

This isn’t the time to be pointing the finger of blame, but it has to be said past failures on social care are now coming back to haunt us as a society. In terms of reforming and investing in social care, we failed to repair the roof whilst the sun was shining. Now the storms are gathering, we don’t have
such a totally robust system
as we could have had ready to meet any challenge, including Covid-19.

As times goes by we will have to think outside the box.

Whilst social care providers are pretty much at full stretch now, we will have to find extra capacity to keep taking new admissions and support our hospitals, even if it means temporarily using lounges/dining rooms as extra beds spaces for example. Extreme times call for extreme measures.

Social care is already in the midst of its own crisis, with 1.5m not getting the care they need and 100,000 staff vacancies in the sector at any one time. If, as the Government is suggesting, up to 20 per cent of the working population gets Covid-19, then the social care workforce will struggle and we may well have to call upon volunteers to help. Retired nursing staff could help out with care and others take up non-medical tasks.

The National Care Force is being set up to create a bank of healthcare workers, care providers or volunteers who can be called upon to help people in the community with coronavirus.

As a community too, we will need to pull together to get through this and it will be up to us all to look out for our relatives, friends and neighbours, especially if periods of enforced isolation for those with the virus or people over 70 are happening.

Regrettably, there was little recognition of the strain social care is under in last week’s Budget, with the Chancellor merely promising help “in the next few months”. That isn’t good enough for a virus that won’t wait patiently at the door.

We have regularly invited government after government to visit social care on the frontline to see what the sector provides and to understand the challenges it faces. But those invitations have gone unanswered. How many of us secretly fear that this crisis will cause social care reform to be postponed yet further?

But if there is to be a positive beyond all this, it may be that the Government sees just what an immense and important contribution social care makes – and that Ministers respond accordingly. This is going to be a challenging period but I know that with a little bit of true Yorkshire grit and determination we will get through.

Mike Padgham is chair of the Scarborough-based Independent
Care Group