Care homes are private for profit businesses and should sort their own PPE?

[frillyfucks]

I don't understand why the government are getting quite such a grilling about the general lack of PPE in care homes, the vast majority of which are private for profit businesses.

Presumably care home operators came into this with the same knowledge base as the government did - surely as the owner of the business, the buck stops with them in terms of not preparing and ordering adequate PPE for their staff?

I know there are some LA run care homes, but my local FB page have got their pitch forks out for our village care home, run by a private for profit company who profited in the hundreds of thousands of pounds in the last financial year- surely the onus is on the company to properly equip their staff, and not the evil bastard government?

The cost of ppe, where you can buy it, has skyrocketed. They can neither readily source it nor afford it. So you can take a principal of they're private so let them solve it, or you can be pragmatic and say they need help.

Care homes go bust fairly regularly, this is not a good time to have mass closures in the industry

I agree that they do need help sourcing as one single care home will struggle to be prioritised by suppliers as a relatively small order. However yes, I have pointed out to a few people that they're mostly not extensions of the NHS. I don't think some of the people who have never dealt with relatives needing care have realised that care homes can be thousands a month.

YANBU. They need help to solve the problem of actually getting the supplies but ultimately it is their own responsibility to ensure they have enough. They should have kept a large amount in stock, just in case, but now they've fucked up, the government has to help.

I was told that all ppe was under government control so they can't just request it or order it when they want.

Yanbu but lots of care homes are telling staff they have to source their own ppe!! It’s outrageous. The directors of these care homes are taking it in and don’t give two shits about their staff. And I’m talking about my experience with one of the vet high end and expensive ones.

I agree with you completely but they can neither source nor afford PPE at the moment because it is so in demand and prices have increased hugely.
In the meantime they are ticking time bombs full of vulnerable people who have no choice but to be there, require that protection and as a civilised society we should provide it.
They are a privatised element of the NHS. Many are saying they are on the verge of imminent closure. What will happen to the hundreds of thousands of residents then? There is nowhere else for them.
Care homes should not be private businesses. If this pandemic has shown us anything, it should be that. They take adult social care funding of 800- 2000 a week, depending on the care home and care required, and make profit from it by cutting corners wherever they can. All of that money (our taxes) should be spent on the residents' care, not on profit for care home owners. Many residents have to pay the fees themselves from life savings.
The care home system should be part of NHS provision fully.

My family have a small care home that is close to going bust. They only take on fully council funded service users with complex mental and physical health illnesses and its a very small home more like a family... they get paid around £360 per resident, not £1000 a week as is always touted on here and no one drives a Bentley again as always touted on here. And they also don’t pay anywhere near as low as minimum wage whilst not making minimum wage themselves given it’s a 24/7 365 days a year commitment. It has an excellent reputation and they do it because they care for the residents they look after.

They, like many homes, ARE sourcing and paying for their own PPE and have been for months. However, the companies they have been using for over 20 years are routinely telling them that they aren’t placing big enough orders or they only previously placed orders every 3-4 months and they are prioritising their more “loyal” customers ... ignoring the fact that it’s a very small home and they place orders that reflects the size of the place. Meanwhile the PPE companies are prioritising the huge firms that provide poor services and huge profits for owners that rarely even visit the homes they own and who pay staff a pittance whilst treating service users terribly.

There has been an offer of PPE made from the emergency Pandemic Flu Supplies from
previous winters that the council hold and which would be close to expiry anyway but that was 6 weeks ago and despite requests for assistance getting hold of PPE nothing yet has been forthcoming.

Add to all of this struggles with the food supply chain, especially for those on special diets, medication shortages, multiple staff calling in sick daily and agency staff being hard to come by (and not an ideal way to run a card home as they have no personal connection with the service users and are often not used to the high standard of care given the nature of some of the other homes they work in), the fact that service users have been discharged back to the care of the home having picked up Covid in hospital without being tested prior to discharge and it’s now spreading like wildfire amongst vulnerable service users and staff, the daily pressure from the council to take on new unsuitable admissions with the beds left after residents have sadly died (one of natural causes, one who was discharged back from hospital with Coronavirus), the stresses of not being able to get access to tests for service users and staff and, most importantly, knowing the service users and staff that you have built up such a close and caring personal relationship with over many years are ill, under massive stress and at risk of losing their lives... I don’t think Joe Public has any idea what it’s personally like for all those involved.

Easy to slag off from an armchair. Devastating and heartbreaking when it’s you or your loved ones who are having to watch everything you’ve worked so hard for crumble, people you care for die and facing daily fear over the fact that you can’t keep the people you care about safe.

Oh...and MONEY hasn’t come into it so far. The last concern for my family members is taking a wage or profit and it’s been some months since they paid themselves.

Well, if you go down this route, then technically so are GP surgeries - they are private businesses, who are contracted to provide services to the NHS.

But this is not the time to be splitting hairs. All of those involved in supporting vulnerable or ill people at the moment are facing huge pressure - of course they should be supported to access the supplies they need - what's the alternative? Lots of elderly or vulnerable people get sick due to the lack of appropriate basic kit?

Some care homes are council run. They are in my experience some of the best ones, with really experienced staff and actually caring people despite a lack of facilities

Then you get the Barcehster, sunrise living etc who purport to be luxury and no
You’re paying maybe thousands a week. Turns out you’re paying for fancy curtains in your room, not experienced care staff who have access to PPE. It’s disgusting.

@FakeFraudSquad your family’s home sounds like one of the good ones. Sorry that you have to deal with all this !

There is hardly any money in social care. Care homes are closing regularly. The need for social care providers (home care and care at home) came about because councils didn't have the resources/expertise/focus to run them. They might be private corporate entities but most will be funded largely by the local council. Most of their residents will be allocated there by the local council.

People don't appreciate that social care plays a major role in unblocking NHS beds. The sector is a key player in coping with the Covid 19 crisis - yet very much unrecognised and unsupported.

If entrepreneurs go into social care expecting to make millions they have picked the wrong sector.

SOME chains of care home are very profitable. Duncan Bannatyne for one is an example of a care home entrepreneur, as is the owner of HC One who bought out BUPA

not all, but some are definitely in it to get rich and rich they get

My mother is in a family run home similar to the one described above and I couldn't ask for more from them. They are working under intolerable conditions and the stress that is placed on the staff is unimaginable, they are responsible for 32 lives on a daily basis. They too are struggling to source PPE supplies, not just at a price they can afford but any at all. Please don't lump all homes in together.

Also, NO care homes didn’t go into this with the same level of information that the government did. Dissemination of information was very poor, confused and often focussed on things that shouldn’t have been the priority (how to advertise new vacancies on a database rather than exactly what to do in terms of barrier nursing and infection control with a suspected or confirmed case of Coronavirus). Remember not all homes are nursing homes. Some are solely for those with mental illness or learning disabilities and existing staff may never have had to barrier nurse before.

Some care homes were still admitting visitors on Mother’s Day or allowing independent service users out and about. My family took the decision to close the home to visitors 3 weeks prior to lockdown and kept service users inside with individual email accounts set up, Skype
set up, each resident given a personal mobile that is regularly topped up so that they could speak to relatives. This was a big problem due to Deprivation of Liberties and they were having to actually go against legislation and Social Services, CQC etc were unable to give advice as they understood logically the need to keep service users safe but the legislation in place was very much against depriving service users of liberties without in person assessment by Social Services. In the end things changed rapidly with regard to that but the head start meant the home and staff were able to stay COVID free until this weekend. Staff were making huge personal sacrifices to ensure they didn’t pick up Covid and the home was helping them by getting extra loaves of bread, 6 pints of milk, trays of eggs etc delivered to the home for each staff member to take back home to their families so they wouldn’t have to visit supermarkets regularly. Staff did not pay for this.

And then one man was assessed by a Dr as having to be admitted to hospital with an unrelated health condition and came back totally asymptomatic with Covid and within 10 days 4 other residents (one being his partner) and 9 members of staff tested positive. So over this weekend all hell broke loose and believe me it was hard enough prior to that.

Our government was poorly prepared for this. Care homes have been left to get on with an absolutely impossible situation.

Staff go off sick in droves, some without symptoms just out of fear for their own families, many agency staff are refusing to work in Covid confirmed homes...so you have care homes at the moment with dangerously low staffing levels and always the danger that one day you could have NO staff cover at all...then what happens? No one at a higher level is answering that. You can’t just leave a care home full of people to care for themselves. It’s terrifying.

My mum is in an HC One care home. It is the largest provider of care homes in the UK, having 329 homes.

Its 2018 accounts profit and loss showed it had a turnover of £309m.It made a loss of £6m.

Your definition of the word profit is utterly bogus. A care home may collect hundreds of thousands of pounds in fees but surely no one is stupid enough not to realise that nearly all of that gets spent providing the fucking care.

My parents own 2 care homes for adults with learning disabilities. I am having to drive miles every day to pick up food and PPE fOr them to ensure their residents and staff are safe and protected.

My parents have moved into a caravan on site so there is someone there 24/7, and to allow the staff that don’t have symptoms to continue having their days off and downtime. My mum literally got the all clear from breast cancer in February.

Not all care homes are the same, and I absolutely think the govt should be providing them with PPE. The elderly and disabled are humans too and deserve to be safe and protected in their homes.

The elderly and disabled are humans too and deserve to be safe and protected in their homes.

Not to mention, the staff of the care homes. Some have good employers (eg the ones some PP have mentioned in their families), some don't. Low wages, no state backed pensions etc.

Very good point Errol. The staff at my parents care homes have been incredible, only going off sick if they have symptoms and really have eased the residents minds, and helped them through this, because as you can imagine the loss of routine has been particularly hard. They’re paid well over min wage, and have a bonus scheme.

The fact is care homes haven't got and can't get the protective equipment their staff need. To protect lives, they like many many other businesses need support from the government.

Yes, bad management. Our manager purchased ours in the very early days.

PPE is a finite item. Once it’s used it’s done. So you can buy as much as you want, but at some point you’ll need more and now it’s next to impossible to get it.

I hadn't thought about it that way, but yes of course the government must help, but not already having a storeroom full of the stuff is not really down to the government.

I don't suppose anyone running a care home had a plan for this, but next time they (and we) must.

Some are profitable, done are not and really struggling. They rely on what they get from social care and that's minimum. Budgets would not have included PPE.

I don't suppose anyone running a care home had a plan for this, but next time they (and we) must.

Then perhaps we should all do better by not voting in a government that continually erodes what the care homes receive for providing this care. Of course care homes are to blame if they cannot find PPE for sale for the pittance they have to spend.