Speaking on 6 July, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said ‘too many care homes didn’t really follow the procedures in the way that they could have’. This is the latest attempt by the government to rewrite history by shifting blame away from the government for the disaster that has unfolded in care homes. Responding on Radio 4 the next day, Mark Adams, chief executive of social care charity Community Integrated Care said that ‘If this is genuinely his view, we are almost entering a Kafkaesque alternative reality, where the government set the rules; we follow them; they don’t like the results. They then deny setting the rules and blame the people who were trying to do their best’.
Lives cut short
As we laid out in FRFI 276, government guidance was totally chaotic. Initial guidance on 25 February stated that infection in care homes was ‘very unlikely’ and mandated few provisions. Many care homes were forced to make their own individual decisions about limiting outside visitors, as government guidance did not mandate closing care homes to outside visits until 2 April – ten days after the general lockdown began. Whatever evasions Johnson may like to engage in, the fact is that in April 15,000 elderly people were discharged from hospitals into care homes, including those who had tested positive for Covid-19. This was the main point of access of the virus into care homes; and the blame lies squarely with Johnson and his government.
Another contributing factor to the disaster in care homes has been the pronounced levels of exploitation and precariousness of the care workforce. The lack of adequate sick pay for the 58% of frontline care workers on zero hour contracts encourages workers not to take a day off, even if they suspect that they have contracted Covid-19. One recent ONS study of 5,000 English care homes found that regular use of precarious ‘bank’ staff increased the rate of infection by one and a half times, due to the fact that they work across multiple locations.
According to the Office for National Statistics, up to 20 June, there were 19,394 deaths of care home residents ‘involving Covid-19’. This is likely to significantly understate the case, however, as counted deaths must both explicitly mention Covid-19 on the death certificate and be registered with the Care Quality Commission. The number of excess deaths above the average for the same period over the last five years was 29,393. This latter figure is a much better approximation of the full impact of the government’s murderous neglect of care home residents. Once the 3,628 excess deaths among recipients of domiciliary care are counted, this amounts to a grim total of over 33,000 elderly and disabled people’s lives cut short. Though the capitalists in the care sector do indeed shoulder some of the blame for this tragedy, it is a self-serving lie to blame the disaster on care homes not following the government’s chaotic and inadequate procedures.
Seamus Padraic
