Covid inquiry begins examination of impact on social care sector

James Melley

Principal producer of social affairs

BBC A care worker in a facial mask and other personal protective equipment are looking at a resident of the care center. This blow was drawn in April 2020. Bbc

In the first days of the pandemic, the staff of the care household put on full personal protective equipment

The Covid survey will begin to examine the impact of the pandemic on the care services for the elderly and disabled on Monday.

Benching families say they have been waiting for this moment for years, describing the way Covid has swept through care as one of the clearest and most devastating failures in the pandemic.

Nearly 46,000 residents of the care house died with COVID in England and in Wales between March 2020 and January 2022, many of which in the first weeks of the pandemic.

The government says it supports the investigation and undertakes to learn from it.

There are key questions that families and care staff wish to answer, in particular why the decision was made in March 2020 to quickly unload certain hospital patients in care homes.

They blame this, in part, for the sowing of the virus in care houses at the early stages of the pandemic.

There are also questions about coverage notices “do not cancel” to be placed on certain residents at home by medical services and visit policies that have prevented families from seeing their loved ones for months.

“It was a horrible and horrible period,” said Maureen Lewis, director of St Ives Lodge Care Home in northeast London.

The home takes care of up to 35 people, many of whom are demented.

When we visited earlier this month, some residents were seated around a table in the dining room, making collages in bright colors of flower baskets. The staff and residents were sitting at the cheek by traversing each other with each other.

It was a huge contrast to our first visit on April 15, 2020. Then the staff were dressed from head to toe in protective combinations, their faces covered by masks. It was three weeks after locking the United Kingdom to try to stop the spread of Covid. Despite this, St Ives Lodge had just lost six residents in a week.

“It was the most difficult. And it was just at the very beginning of Covid,” recalls Maureen.

On April 17, 2020, the number of deaths in care houses reached its peak, with 540 people who die in England and in Wales in one day.

St Ives Lodge had locked himself in mid-March, but a resident who had returned from the hospital developed coated symptoms. Those who were sitting at the same dining table that the same signs quickly showed him. They died within seven days of each other. Later, the house lost another resident against the virus.

At the time, Maureen described how doctors and district nurses refused to come, how Care Houses had trouble obtaining protective equipment (EPI) and there were no useful government advice.

“We were like a mini hospital,” she told BBC News, “dealing with end-of-life care … Google what to do”.

It was an experience described by many other managers of care houses who felt abandoned by the government and the NHS in the first months of the Pandemic.

With hindsight, Maureen said: “There were no protocols, no tests and [the NHS] I mainly got rid of all residents in care homes. They were released as usual, but we were in pandemic. “”

She wants the investigation to discover why such decisions have been made, and she wants those of positions of responsibility to be held to report.

She remains angry with the former secretary of health and social care, Matt Hancock, for his declaration on May 15, 2020, that the government had “launched a protective ring around care homes”.

“There was no protective ring for care houses,” she said. “He must take responsibility for the decisions he has made.”

Maureen Lewis, wearing a gray tunic and a red strap, standing in the garden of the St Ives Lodge care house. She has her hair tied and wears glasses.

Maureen Lewis remembers the first days of the pandemic as “a horrible and horrible moment”

Mr. Hancock is expected to testify in the coming days. It will be his seventh and probably a final appearance.

For Jean Adamson, the evidence that will be heard in the investigation in the coming weeks will be the most important to date.

Her father, Aldrick, died with Covid on April 15, 2020. The last time she saw him, it was when, when she stood outside, she saw her out the window of her care house a few days before her death. She was devastated, she couldn’t be by her side.

“We were not allowed to say goodbye to him, holding his hand,” she said. “It is an experience that will stay with me forever. There is no sorrow like that.”

She also has questions about patient release policy to worry about houses.

On March 17, 2020, the NHS sent a letter to all hospitals telling them to release beds.

Over the next four weeks, around 25,000 patients were released in care, many were not tested for COVID.

On April 2, 2020, the government advised “negative [Covid] The tests are not necessary “before the patients were released in care houses.

This was changed on April 15, 2020, the day Aldrick Adamson died. The new directives of the government said that any person returned to the hospital to a care manager would be tested first.

Jean Adamson, wearing a red shirt and an intelligent commercial costume, holding a photo of his father Aldrick Adamson. Her hair is closely braided and attached to the neck of her neck.

Jean Adamson, with a photo of his father Aldrick Adamson, died in April 2020

Jean Adamson thinks that the patients who arrived at the home of his father’s care could have tied up the virus there.

Other factors such as the staff moving between the healthcare homes and the spread of the general community virus have played a role, but, she says, the rapid exit of the patients to worry about the houses without being tested or isolated was a choice.

“It was an reckless decision,” she said. “The way my father and my tens of thousands of other residents of the house have been sacrificed. It really brings me because I think that feels the fate of ageism and disability discrimination.”

During the five years that followed the death of her father, she became an active member of the campaign group, COVID-19, loosening the families for justice UK.

She says the group wants the investigation to examine the ban on home visits that have separated families for months.

They also want answers to the reason why some people were “regularly placed on resuscitation orders [DNARs]”, without discussion with relatives or an evaluation.

“There was an abuse of the resuscitation policy of not trying. We must understand how it happened,” she said.

The survey will also examine the difficulties encountered by care agents who supported people in their own house.

This phase should last five weeks, the report is only due next year.

For Maureen Lewis and Jean Adamson, the memories of the pandemic remain traumatic and say the two what they want now is the truth.

“We must understand so that we can learn lessons in the future when we have the next pandemic and what happened here should never happen again,” explains Jean.

Maureen would like greater recognition of how care services have survived without much help.

In the future, she says: “There must be more investment” and better emergency planning.

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