To think care home bosses should take some responsibility for Covid infections in homes

[JustAsking1837]

This is just in response to criticism over Boris Johnson's comments. Sorry if this has already been done but I've not found any threads on this surprisingly. I am no fan of Boris or the Government but day in day out I have listened to the press savagely criticise the Government no matter what it does or doesn't do and is blamed for everything. However everyone is in uproar when Boris has suggested that many care homes may have not done everything they should have to prevent infections. I am not necessarily saying they are to blame, as I don't know, but think it should be fair game for discussion.

I do worry that we are being infiltrated by posters deliberately trying to set the cat among the pigeons.
Is it just me?

@Fosler

The care homes should have had enough PPE for such an event. These are privately run businesses so why do they expect anyone to supply them with any equipment? Do they expect the government to supply cleaning materials, bedding? No. They have failed and won't admit it.

The NHS could not source enough PPE, suppliers then only supplied the NHS and LA funded care homes, after those two areas were supplied with PPE private care facilities could then purchase.

Why is it the fault of private facilities that they were third in line for PPE?

Yabvu if the nhs couldnt get ppe what chance did care homes have?
Could individual care homes have done more? Possibly but the majority did everything they could to protect their residents.
So a situation where half the staff are off, minimal ppe available so the staff left have to look after double the amount of people with less protection? Nope not their fault at all.

So many on this thread have no clue about social care & the industry but still think they can make a judgement about why it's the care homes fault? Idiotic comments.

The ppe guidance for care homes changed almost daily (when it finally was issued).....took them ages to provide a robust and clear set of guidelines - plus the whole care home set up makes COVID transmissions rife. The government either wilfully neglected the sector or were immensely stupid not to see the disaster that happened

Remember that in most cases we're talking about carers paid minimum wage not highly qualified health care professionals. The guidance from public health was not clear, written for care staff but used clinical language and even contradicted itself and was updated in some cases daily. PPE ordered was diverted to hospitals and people were discharged from COVID wards without a test straight into care homes. People criticised care homes for banning visitors then for not banning them. The additional funding was slow to come. What exactly could care home owners do differently?

So many on this thread have no clue about social care & the industry but still think they can make a judgement about why it's the care homes fault? Idiotic comments.

The ppe guidance for care homes changed almost daily (when it finally was issued).....took them ages to provide a robust and clear set of guidelines - plus the whole care home set up makes COVID transmissions rife. The government either wilfully neglected the sector or were immensely stupid not to see the disaster that happened

For some reason the govt decided that the best measure of success in managing the pandemic was whether or not the nhs was overwhelmed. (Not how many people it was killing, which might have been more helpful.) One way they protected the nhs was to ship infected people from the most vulnerable group out of hospitals and into care homes. The government told us it was very unlikely that care homes were at risk, but thousands of people died there without the palliative care they would have received in hospital. Without adequate PPE those working in the sector risked their lives - many lost their lives. And now Boris Johnson is suggesting that it is somehow the fault of the care homes. He is just despicable.

Yabvu. My MIL works in the care sector - they have worked their arses off, they have put themselves in danger with inadequate protection, managers had to accept patients straight out of hospital who hadn’t been tested for Covid. Johnson is trying to shift the blame and it’s a bloody disgrace. The buck stops with him - he should apologise and do better.

From the Governments POV, Hospitals had to emptied of patients.

Johnson was desperate to avoid the scenes we saw in Italy and Spain, the elderly paid the price for this.

There are no TV cameras in care homes, so he can bluster his way through this better than say dozens of dying patients in a car park make shift tent.

I believe a doctor is crowd funding a judicial review in his handling of the CV crisis.

@jasjas1973 im sure your mum did a cracking job and was extremely caring and conscientious as are the majority of care staff. My post was more directed at the owners of care homes rather than the staff on the ground. I think the thread has given me a better understanding of various issues care homes faced.

We have had management work on the floor, in the other part of our care home. They too have had to do jobs of housekeepers, who have been off sick.

I am a discharge coordinator for a hospital. My main job during COVID was to get people out of hospital. We did this by moving them in to care homes. At the begining we were not provided with any means to test people leaving hospital for COVID. So we sent people who most likely had COVID to care homes. Care homes were advised to keep those people isolated for 14 days - different staff, different area of the home etc. The homes did not have sufficient staff or space to do this.

Homes did not want to take people leaving hospital, they could see the risk. Much more clearly than we could. We were advised to use any means possible to get homes to take them. This included giving them obscene amounts of money per placement, threatening them with CQC, begging, anything!

My orders to get people out of hospital came directly from top NHS bosses, Which got their orders directly from the government.

Homes are not to blame.

I don't think either the Government nor some care homes have acted appropriately. My friend had symptoms that weren't typically Covid (sore throat, sinus pain) she was threatened with a disciplinary if she took time off (she'd already had some unrelated absences). They wouldn't agree to a Covid-19 test initially but did eventually. She was told to come in before her results were back. She felt too ill to work and only escaped a disciplinary by having a positive test result. Members of staff would go room to room without hand-washing in between. Cleaning wasn't increased. Many many things. I asked her why she didn't whistleblow. She needs the job desperately. She doesn't drive or have family support for childcare so getting a new job isn't so easy.

The government will absolve themselves of anything. They never take responsibility. I’m not even shocked anymore that they are this repulsive.

Care home workers are this weeks “traitors” and “enemies of the state”. Last week it was policemen, the month before that it was teachers and next is probably going to be the scientists. Anyone to blame or throw under a bus except of themselves.

I could not have enough admiration for care home workers. Such a difficult job that requires so much resilience and kindness. The hard work that goes into care work for little pay or thanks by some sections of the public is incredible. How care workers, social workers, policemen, teachers and civil servants must feel reading some comments online and seeing what the government says about them after the overwhelming majority of them give their blood, sweat and tears into their work each day. I honestly feel the anger is brewing. I think I going to lead to some sort of major revolt or national strike.

I've worked in a few care homes this year. All but 1 made up their own rules at various stages. At least 2/3s stopped replacing the hand sanitizer when it ran out - I've been using my own.
The same homes only have medium or small gloves - again, I take my own.
One home told me I didn't need gloves as they were Covid free - I still used my own, there's no way I'll do 'personal care' without gloves. So when Boris made his comments, I totally agreed.

The fees are no indication of 'care' either. Most of these homes are just ticking bombs, more vulnerable people are going to die because of the attitudes of the management.
Yes, I'm paid a little over minimum wage, it doesn't stop me treating the clients with respect. Too often the carers who are favoured by the management are the ones who make sure everyone is in bed by 8pm, even if they - the clients - don't want to be. The same staff manage to only change the pads - incontinence pads - twice a day. Keeping the costs down.

Mrsormiss@ if what you say is true, why didn’t you report it?

I work in a care home and we had full PPE and locked down in March . We refused any patients from anywhere unless they were covid tested on the day we admitted them ...we have been Covid free so far !!

There are bound to be cases of bad management but ultimately the government are responsible for social care which has been badly neglected for years. The homes mentioned didn’t suddenly become poor carers so should have been sorted out years ago.

@Bellablahhole And the reason the less scrupulous care homes can get away with that in the first place?

Because of the Tories erosion of workers rights!

I agree with you on some points OP.
I spoke to a care home owner recently who is very experienced and known for advising and supporting others locally. She told me she was sending advice out from January urging homes to buy PPE and set up procedures. She bought PPE for her own homes and some extra as she knew others, who were sitting back, refusing to spend on it and saying the NHS would provide it, might struggle and ask her for help later.

Her homes have had no Covid as have most others she advised and supported. The homes that had it, that she was aware of, had either not used adequate PPE or had moved staff between homes, used agency staff, etc. Her feeling was that there were faults on the government side but care home owners also needed to share the blame for failing to act and failing to implement a lot of the advice that was shared

One group of homes near us posted on a local FB page begging for donations, both directly to the old folk and also for PPE. They later posted thanking local catering businesses who donated plastic aprons, gloves, etc. A quick Google showed that last year the business had assets of over £15million and paid their owners in excess of £600,000. Why did they not buy PPE? These home owners charge the elderly high fees, pay their staff a pittance and reward themselves handsomely. I think they do have to take some responsibility

do i think the government fucked up? Yes

do i think their pressuring of care homes to take untested patients was criminal? Yes.

do i think ALL care home did their absolute best to protect their service users. No.

Do i think some carehomes were criminally negligent and shouldn't be blaming the whole thing on BJ.. yes.

The whole thing was a clusterfuck, and the only victims, either way, were the people who died.

@JustAsking1837 You ve the missed the point i was trying to make, That infection control in care homes has been known about for decades, if a lowly nursing sister knew this, why did the Govt ignore it?

Bad practise (in CHs) of did happen but it is not responsible for 20,000 deaths and counting.

The Govt had around 2 months notice of CV, plenty of time to get PPE, organise CH's etc but Johnson missed 7 Cobra meetings & he and Hancock more interested in the PR handling of this rather than the practicalities "We are admired for our pandemic preparedness, the NHS is ready blah fucking blah"

Given the huge numbers of deaths, OP do you really think its appropriate for Johnson to attempt to shift blame?
Is that what a leader does now a days?

*HeIenaDove
Because of the Tories erosion of workers rights!

I thought we still had a Labour government in December 2009?

Oxfam;
^"In this paper, we examine the nature of exploitation of migrant care
workers in the care sector, made possible by the lack of an effective
employment rights enforcement regime."^

oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/114060/bp-who-cares-uk-care-workers-021209-en.pdf;jsessionid=72922A28E40B50C4A84590854791D247?sequence=1

I thought we still had a Labour government in December 2009?

So things were bad in 2009, Cons have been in power for 10 years (and for the majority of the post war period)
What have they done to rectify the situation........

How about these for starters? Far more workers on ZHC's, extension to 2 years for any employment rights to kick in, lowering of redundancy consultation period from 90 to 45 days (employee number dependant)
Cuts in enforcement teams, allowing more exploitation, which has helped cause the Leicester CV lockdown.

I know a lot of families where they have young adults living in care communities. They have all been safe with no Covid cases. The difference between them and care homes for older people is that they didn't get anyone discharged into them from hospital. They shut their doors to visitors before lockdown as did many care homes and used what PPE they could get hold of. So for me the hospital discharges are the defining factor for cases.