Care workers at Yorkshire home felt they were being judged at height of pandemic, Ed Balls reveals

The former politician was speaking after the first episode of his new two-part BBC Two documentary, Inside the Care Crisis, which saw him lock down in a Scarborough care home as infections surged last year.

He spent time at the St Cecilia’s home in the North Yorkshire town, but Mr Balls, whose own mother has been looked after in a home for the last three years, said that he was “shocked” to hear how much staff did not feel like they were included in the public sentiments of thanks for health and social care staff last year.

Given the weeks of the Clap for Carers and many messages of thanks from the public, Mr Balls said: “When I then started working at Cecilia’s one of the very striking things was how much the care staff didn’t think they would be thanked and supported.

“And when I said me and my family are clapping every Thursday night for people who work in the NHS and social care, their view was nobody was really clapping for us, nobody was clapping for us, not really.

“They felt as though they were being judged locally, with people thinking you know all these people have died and it must because you did something wrong.

“And that sense of being excluded from the positivity around the NHS, I was quite shocked by that and quite upset by it because I thought no, no, no, we all think you are really important.”

The films came about when the former Morley and Outwood MP’s plans to travel to America to make a documentary about the Presidential election fell through because of travel restrictions during the pandemic.

“It wasn’t it wasn’t the plan for me to do this at all,” he said, adding that producers had the idea for him to “be inside, be immersed” as care providers were really coming into the spotlight.

“That made sense for me to do that, partly because I had been in Government and in the Treasury working on social care as a minister, and also as an MP had been to lots of care homes.

So the question why have we not sorted out social care is something I ought to be able to try and answer.

“And at the same time, because my mum has been in the care home for the last three years, I’ve also experienced what it’s like to be that family member or the inside of the care debate.

“So the idea is that these things will all come together, and that’s what we set out to do.”

Asked what he hoped people would take away from the documentaries, Mr Balls highlighted the discrepancy between how caring jobs are perceived by the public, and how difficult the roles are as well as the sacrifices that need to be made.

“I think it has to be the mismatch between how important and difficult and skilled these jobs are, if they’re going to properly care for our loved ones – and the perception that most people and most carers believe most people have those jobs – a wide gulf which ends up in this bigger world where there’s not a lot of talk about vocation, career progression training and it leads to low pay and lots of turnover, and lots of people who end up making huge sacrifices to do the jobs in a very unfair way.”