Of all 10 reports due to be published by the long-running Covid-19 inquiry, this week’s findings on adult social care were especially anticipated.
The impact of Covid-19 on the care sector was calamitous: tens of thousands of people died, staff were forced to wear bin bags due to a lack of protective clothing and relatives were banned from seeing their loved ones in their dying days.
Heather Hallett’s report, the sixth she has published since the inquiry began in the spring of 2022, describes all this in exacting detail.
But with each report that is published there is growing unease among bereaved families, campaign groups and trade unions that the findings are repeating much that we already knew, and the recommendations are falling short of what is needed.
One of the inquiry’s core aims was to establish the facts of what happened during the pandemic and examine decision-making processes – although not to establish any criminal guilt.
But its other, arguably more important, function was to identify lessons to be learned and produce actionable recommendations that will ensure mistakes aren’t repeated in future pandemics.
It is now the most expensive public inquiry in history, costing over £200m, while the government has spent more than £122m on legal advice and dedicated staff to prepare evidence. The public rightly expect some tangible results.
The recommendations in the latest report – listed in a six-page appendix at the end of the 300-page document – include suggestions for more detailed pandemic planning for the care sector, creating a record of isolation facilities in care homes, and new guidance on visitor restrictions in these scenarios.
But many members of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK said they expected more and would be quickly creating a list of demands for how the recommendations can be strengthened.
Deborah Doyle, whose mother, Sylvia Griffiths, died aged 76 in a Sunderland care home on 16 April 2020, said: “It’s everything that we knew already, it needs to go further. I felt quite underwhelmed.
“I feel like Matt Hancock and Boris Johnson have basically got away scot-free.”
Jean Adamson’s father, Aldrick Adamson, died on 15 April 2020 aged 98 after contracting Covid in a care home and she believes government policy to discharge untested hospital patients into care homes was to blame.
She said she felt “let down” by the report in many respects. “It does not hold individuals accountable for the multiple failures in the way the pandemic was managed,” she said.
“And the recommendations need to be much more robust, we need to hold the government’s feet to the fire so we can prevent another national tragedy in future.”
She pointed to the Gloria’s Law campaign, which is calling for care home residents to be given the legal right to a “care supporter” who would not be subject to visitor restrictions in future pandemics. “This is the kind of thing we would have liked to see,” she said.
Nicola Brook, a lawyer representing bereaved families, described the report as a “superficial damp squib”.
Other gaps were also raised. Francesca Humi, of the Kanlungan migrant centre, said the report failed to fully consider how migrant care workers – a third of the sector’s workforce – were disproportionately affected and why.
Of course, it’s unfair to expect Hallett to tackle the huge structural issues that have long plagued the social care sector in the UK – as she said in her statement, she has left this to Louise Casey, who is leading a commission into the creation of a National Care Service.
But without bolder recommendations and sharper findings on accountability, the inquiry risks losing the faith of the key interest groups who fought so hard for it to happen, and leaving the UK no better prepared for the next pandemic.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
