Shocked about death in care homes **MNHQ content warning**

[happyandsingle]

Just this.Cannot believe how care home residents and staff have been thrown to the wolves.
Everything focused on the NHS it's like the elderly didnt matter.
Feel ashamed how we treat our elderly and even if the government act now in my opinion it's to late as to many lives have been lost.
To think the goverment need to be held accountable for this.

I am not surprised as a lot of care homes were struggling well before Corona.

@Jaxhog It is the last resort not the 1st choice. I have seen plenty of relatives nearly on their last legs, crying because they have had to leave a loved one in a care home.

@Lemonblast Yes, there is one carer who will video call me but i think she's just had enough of the stress and isn't going into work- i cannot blame her.
Calling the actual home does absolutely nothing! It feels like they've all disappeared :(

Way to backpedal @Jaxhog

I agree B1rdbra1n. Money was sound to commandeer the private hospitals. Money wasn’t found to commandeer the care homes/compensate private owners for any impact on their turnover.

There can only be one reason for this.

2 Unless required to be in hospital (see Annex B), patients must not remain in an NHS bed.

@LangClegsInSpace - which is why the government Co-opted private hospitals to take on ill NHS patients not fit for discharge

When Boris Johnson told everyone to shield the elderly and vulnerable and to isolate for 12 weeks. What part of that message didn't the care homes get??
The private sector are quite happy for the elderly to sell their homes to pay £800 - £1200 per week and hand over pensions.
The private sector care homes have directors that are quite happy to have large salaries and creaming off dividends whilst paying staff minimums.
I agree it is a disgrace, but shouldn't be put on the government. These care homes have a duty of care to their residents and if they where struggling should have informed someone.
Also the government issued guidelines and protocols to them a long time ago.
I believe there should be a public enquiry into these private care homes to see what happened and to get to the Truth.

@happyandsingle - I agree - this is our national shame.

And the attitude of posters here and on other threads (memorably a poster casually discussing the oldies as clogging up hospital beds) shows an entrenched ageism.

Replace the word ‘care homes’ with ‘hospices’ or ‘cancer rehab unit’ (if there were such a thing ) and I doubt you would get the ‘well they would be going to do soon anyway’

die soon, not do soon

The private sector care homes have directors that are quite happy to have large salaries and creaming off dividends whilst paying staff minimums.

I don’t have any skin in this particular game, but are you suggesting that people running large and complex care home groups should work for minimum wage? Do you think that any would?

Do you have examples of some of these salaries and amounts of dividends ‘creamed off’ by directors, so that we can see how much is being extracted and decide whether it is reasonable?

noego you are wilfully ignoring the reality of the economics of running a care home, including how councils pay way less than it costs to look after a resident (they of course are, in turn, starved of money). The vast majority of them would not have the financial resources to be able to isolate infected patients sufficiently. This is obvious to anyone who knows he smallest bit about them. Including the government. They could have released extra funding. They chose not to, whereas they’ve thrown money around where it affects the young.

I have no skin in this game, no elderly relatives in care homes. But it’s obvious to me that the elderly are being sacrificed and seen as not worth spending money on.

Cannot believe how care home residents and staff have been thrown to the wolves - Have they? How?

Everything focused on the NHS it's like the elderly didnt matter: The NHS budget is mainly spent on the 65+ age group. 80% of A&E admissions are elderly.

Feel ashamed how we treat our elderly and even if the government act now in my opinion it's to late as to many lives have been lost: How do we treat our elderly badly? They get way more support than other sections of society.

To think the goverment need to be held accountable for this - For what exactly? Spending more per person on 65+ in all matters of healthcare and pension provision?

The elderly and the vulnerable due to health conditions are a growing section of society, is this sustainable, a society where most people are old or sick?

@Iamthewombat is spot on.

There isn’t enough money for the government to pay for all old people to live out their days in a care home. This should NOT be the government’s responsibility.

The average person pays into the tax system nowhere near enough to cover such costs for themselves - in fact, less than half the population are even net tax contributors. Where do you want the government to find the six figure sums per year per person which it takes to keep people in care homes? Because it has to come out of somewhere.

I for one would much rather my tax money got spent on the NHS, schools, the disabled, support for single parents, etc etc etc.

The government is absolutely right to prioritise healthcare to those people who are not very elderly and in care homes. Call it ageism if you like but yes, to me, it is more important to treat a 40 year old with a family to provide for who has Covid-19 than a 95 year old living in a care home.

In my local area the reason there is no money to do things like fix the roads is because all of the budget is taken up by social care, all of our resources are going towards looking after the frail vulnerable and elderly, of course lots of the money is also being hoarded by The Very Wealthy.
Extreme levels of inequality lead to stress and ill health for the masses and extreme luxury for the few.

And actually, I would like to think most 95 year olds would agree with that.

We are paying £1200 per week for my mums rest home ,so far no cases at all in hers
But she was only in the home 4 weeks before the lockdown,and they didn’t take her outside once in that time ,not even in to a garden
So I’m not sure I will keep her there after the lockdown finished

Care homes are turning into a tragedy with a severe lack of regulation , oversight, PPE and sensible policies (e.g. returning from hospitals). I don't know anybody in one, but seeing countries like Belgium where it appears hard hit because care homes deaths are included, you can see the mortality rate per 100k population is significant.

I would mostly attribute UK's reported excess deaths to Covid plus other preventable deaths concentrated in care homes.

Re profits, a 2019 UK report says, "Out of a total annual income of £15bn, an estimated £1.5bn (10%) leaks out of the care home industry annually in the form of rent, dividend payments, net interest payments out, directors’ fees, and profits before tax, money not going to front line care. This is equivalent to the £1.5bn of additional funding for social care promised by the government" CHPI 2019

Of course I would like my frail elderly parents to be treated with loving care and attention but I am not prepared to sacrifice MY golden years, the time when my children are finally independent and I can relax a bit, I'm not prepared to Sacrifice 20 years out of my life to provide care for people who live 400 miles away from me anyway.
No doubt Jaxhog will tell me that I'm selfish because 'they changed my nappies when I was a baby' as if bring up a child is in any way comparable.
Providing care for elderly parents is completely incompatible with modern Life

@frothandbubble So are you saying poor old people should not get any care? And no healthcare?

And more and more older people have no relatives who could provide care anyway even if they would. Should they just die once they need practical help?

@Blackbeans The government chose to encourage local authorities to close their own care homes and commission care. That is the preferred conservative government model.

It's not just the UK
www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-seniors-care-home-neglect-is-our-national-shame/
'As Canadians continue to adhere to public health guidelines for COVID-19, one aspect of our country’s response to this crisis has been devastatingly inadequate. Across Canada, many intensive care unit spaces sit empty, while residents of long-term care homes are dying in their beds – sometimes abandoned, filthy with excrement and alone'

@Cantory I’m saying that people should not blaming the government for the current situation. And I do think that at some point there needs to be a complete rethink about social care for the elderly. The NHS was not designed to try to keep everyone alive as long as physically possible. These days, we have the medical advances and technology to do that (at vast expense) - the question is whether we should. Or if that money would be better spent on the young.

Bottom line - No, I do not think what is happening in care homes right now is a scandal or a travesty or that the government is to blame or that the elderly in care homes should have the same priority in terms of healthcare as the young, when there is not enough capacity to treat everyone. And that doesn’t make me a bad person - it makes me a pragmatist.

The average person in a care home has a life expectancy of 11 months.
The majority are elderly and of lower than average health.
Unfortunately it’s just how things are. There isn’t the capacity to treat everyone. It isn’t the government's fault, no one has been ‘thrown to the wolves’ - the priorities have to come somewhere unfortunately.