How we ended up back at square one on social care - Yorkshire Post Letters

Around five years ago when Covid first hit, our lives changed in ways we could never have imagined. We all remember those first few days, the news headlines growing more alarming by the hour, the sense of unease settling in, the streets eerily quiet as the UK came to a halt.

There was so much we did not know, so many questions left unanswered, but what we did know was that those in our care needed us more than ever. Yes, the NHS was on the frontline but so too was social care.

While quite rightly one of the Government-led taglines was ‘Protect the NHS’, all too often social care workers were also being overwhelmed and put at huge risk, yet at the same time were overlooked and, in some ways, were invisible.

For many of the members of the public and politicians, they had the NHS workforce at the forefront of their minds.

Yet, it was a clap for ‘carers’ in all settings and professions that eventually showed public appreciation of the social care workforce. We even had praise from the then Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for those in the frontline - and I believed the Pandemic would perhaps be a catalyst for change in our social care system.

How wrong was I? During the Pandemic, people recognised how important social care was and it was said, never again should it be seen as the poor relation to the NHS.

How short memories are, and social care is right back where we started, at the end of the queue. It’s a national disgrace and we should be ashamed.

We owe those social care staff a debt of gratitude for the work they did then and continue to do now under enormous pressure.