The scandal among scandals during this pandemic is the care home structure in Britain.
We will look back at this appalling, tragic episode in our global history, and our children and grandchildren will ask us: “Did that really happen? Did you really leave the most vulnerable of our society – the elderly, the infirm, the defenceless, the muddled, sick and weak – in care homes, shut away from their closest relatives? Did you leave them to be ravaged by a deadly virus, and do very little to help them?”
Because that is what’s happening right now. There are elderly people – many with Alzheimer’s, many with dementia, many frail – in thousands of residential homes up and down Britain, and they are very much at risk.
Once COVID-19 seeps into these homes, it is a monumentally difficult job to protect the residents inside. The respiratory disease attacks the lungs, making it difficult to breathe.
We’re told by the experts that it hits those with underlying conditions worst. That has become a catch-all phrase that means most of us believe it couldn’t possibly apply to us or anyone we know or love.
And yet it does. It basically covers everybody.
I’ve interviewed fit men in their 30s who have collapsed after they have done their training runs. I’ve spoken to the children of medical directors who’re still working beyond retirement, nurses with young children, and pensioners. They are all susceptible to this disease.
So imagine if you are in a residential home. A residential home is not a nursing home.
You’re not sick. You’re just elderly. You just need a little bit more support – a little bit more help getting up out of bed in the morning, preparing your meals, getting bathed, going to the bathroom, being helped down the stairs.
You may have some dementia. You may not. But you have company every day. There are always people around you and there are care assistants who will help you brush your hair, scoop the soup up to your mouth and read the newspaper.
These care assistants are not medically trained. They are not nurses. But if you are feeling ill, they will call the GP or community nurse to come and check on you.
There is always help at hand. It gives you security. It is safety in your old age. You don’t worry about break-ins. You don’t worry about meals. You don’t worry about cleaning.
And then there’s a worldwide pandemic, and your care home is infected. You can’t go out. Your relatives can’t come in but the virus just sweeps through the home – and one by one, the residents get sick.
But even still, after a lifetime of working and caring for others, the ones you care for most can’t come and say goodbye to you as you get sicker and sicker and you finally breathe your last breath.
The coronavirus has changed everything – and it’s exposed the very weak lines in our social care structure.
The care assistants are low paid, and they are generally working long days on zero-hour contracts.
One told us: “We are treated like second-class citizens. We think the NHS staff are privileged in comparison.
“If I ring in sick, they ask me: ‘Are you too sick to work? Can you still come in anyway because we’re really short-staffed?’
“I have no idea if we’ve got the right PPE (protective personal equipment). All I see is that it is very different from what I see on the news.”
These are the people who are caring for our elderly men and women – those who have spent their whole lives contributing to society.
Their devotion to the residents and duty to care is often beyond question. We saw some inspiring sacrifice.
At Beechside Home in Liverpool, the care assistants have moved out of their family homes and moved into the care home to stop the virus getting inside. They didn’t want to run the risk of bringing COVID-19 in and infecting the residents.
As care assistant Chloe Williams told us: “They are our family in the end and we’d want anyone to do the same for ours.
“There are people in this home that have been in the war. They’ve been midwives and social workers… they fought for our country and this is us fighting for them… we’re paying them back for what they have done for us.”
There are terrible statistics about the numbers dying in the country’s residential care homes. Outbreaks of the virus in a closed community like a care home are fantastically difficult to control.
The environment is a highly tactile one. At Beechside, the care assistants spent the afternoon dancing with the residents and holding their hands. There were frequent hugs, touches, kisses on the cheek. This is what makes them special. This is what makes the residents smile.
But it also makes it one of the most susceptible places for the virus to replenish and multiply if it gets inside.
They have taken drastic measures by moving the care assistants inside. Most of those we talked to played it down – saying it seemed the most natural thing in the world for them to do. So far it has worked, but for how long?
Halfway through the afternoon, there was a call. A nearby home needed masks. Could they help? Beechside had managed to procure a comfortable amount of PPE for their staff – masks, gloves and plastic pinnies. These are probably not enough if there’s an outbreak, but the minimum amount and in accordance with NHS England guidelines.
The home around the corner that is asking for help is Oak Springs – a care home that is suffering an outbreak and has had 14 deaths in the last fortnight.
Only two who were taken to hospital have actually been tested, and both were positive. But there are few in the home who believe it is anything other than COVID-19 that has hastened their deaths.
The home and all who work inside are distraught. The manager herself is now ill with symptoms, but she told us before she went sick that “they were battling on” and she couldn’t praise her staff highly enough. “They’re under great strain,” she said.
One relative who wanted to be anonymous and whose grandmother is inside the home likened the outbreak to a fire. “It felt like my nan was at that burning building and it was difficult to get a response to it… and as I said all along, the only difference with this is that you just can’t see the fire: the fire is a virus.”
There is much controversy over how these outbreaks are dealt with. There are considerable problems moving elderly people out of environments they are familiar with and into strange ones. It can often be more detrimental than advantageous.
But the local MP believes the time has come to radically think how to deal with the most vulnerable in our society. The elderly cannot be just left to perish, insists Paula Barker, MP for Liverpool Waverley.
“Everybody’s life should be valued equally,” she said. “I don’t care whether you’re 108 or if you’re 10… your life is as valuable when you are young as when you are old.
“They’ve all contributed to society… these people deserve the optimum chance of survival and we’ve got to do everything in our power to ensure that they are safeguarded.”
