MAYBE, just maybe, there is a positive to emerge from the horror that is the Covid-19 experience. Yes, it’s hard to believe right now when we have 22,000 deaths in the UK, when our leaders still can’t decide upon the efficacy of face masks – and our schools are facing online truanting on an unimaginable scale.
But we have the likes of Andy Burnham to pin a little hope upon. The Mayor of Manchester this week has been arguing for immediate cross party talks to solve the care home crises.
As we’ve known since time began, choosing a care home for an elderly parent can be like sending them on a cruise in an ageing rust bucket already holed below the waterline.
The poorest care homes (of which there are many) are a breeding ground for viruses staffed by the disinterested – and sometimes cruel – who vie for the weekly Nurse Ratched Award.
Yes, there are some excellent care homes in Scotland, run by socially aware business leaders, whose staff scrub and clean like Nightingales.
But too many smell of damp sheets rather than compassion. Too many have facilities pared to the bone, in which the balance sheet appears to be way more important than the well-being of the patients. Putting your husband or wife, or mother or father, into a home is one of the toughest decisions anyone can be asked to make.
Now, this perilous decision of choosing a facility has been made infinitely worse, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic.
The National Records of Scotland statistics have revealed that one third of all coronavirus deaths in Scotland have been in care homes. Almost half of Scotland’s care homes have notified the Care Inspectorate of a suspected case. Care homes lack the resources, the qualified staff, the visits from GPs, to cope.
Gary Smith, Scotland secretary for the GMB union, underlines the problem: “We are turning our care homes into morgues, it was avoidable and it is totally unacceptable.”
And when umbrella group Scottish Care ask for the army to step in it underlines the scale of the problem.
Yet, this disaster has at least allowed for Andy Burnham’s long-term argument to go back on the table with a heavy bang.
“The system isn’t in a position to face what’s been thrown at it,” he said of care homes, on Newsnight this week.
“Both political parties have been cowardly over the decades when it comes to the issue of social care. They’ve played politics with people’s lives, with our loved ones. There has to be one system.”
Burnham is demanding – rightly – the care sector comes under the aegis of the NHS.
What we have to do now is scrap the present system and create a new model, funded by tax-payers or insurance schemes as is the way in the likes of Germany and Japan, where the care system is not a second class service.
Yet for years politicians on both sides of the border have failed to tackle the social care issue, to work out why it makes any sense – or is morally right – that our society should show entirely different concerns for a patient with cancer or dementia.
They have chosen to sidestep the cruelty attached to a policy which means-tests the family of those whose minds fade away.
But the time to effect change is now. Burnham calls for a new taxation system that allows for care homes to become a branch of the NHS, where we all pay for everyone’s physical, mental and social needs and where care staff are properly trained and paid a decent wage.
There is a chance he will receive government backing this time around, after previous plans to restructure social care by Theresa May fell by the wayside. The Prime Minister, Health Secretary and several cabinet members have all contracted the potentially fatal virus. And if that doesn’t bring about a shift in perspective regarding how we care for the vulnerable nothing will.
And if Boris Johnson can quote Cicero in his new motto, “The health of the people is the supreme law” why can’t the Scottish Government look to bring the care sector under the control of the NHS?
The First Minister has vowed to use emergency laws to protect care home workers and their residents. Yes, that shows concern. But we have a rapidly ageing population to worry about. Why not think and plan beyond the immediate disaster? Take a few pages out of Burnham’s book?
Hospitals, we are told, are open for business. But care homes are open to continued crises. We need to think about plans to bring about change on a scale that would frighten even Florence.
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