Coronavirus: Exhausted care home staff still waiting for government support 

Care home staff grappling with the ongoing COVID-19 crisis have told Sky News they are still waiting for vital supplies and funding to help them save lives.

Many homes have now had a month of working under intense pressure where they have often had to wait to receive personal protective equipment to shield them from coronavirus, as it has been prioritised for hospitals.

The organisation Care England estimates that up to 7,500 people could have died in the country’s care homes – a number significantly higher than official estimates.

The daily official death toll in the UK, which on Saturday was 888, has not yet included care home deaths and has instead only recorded deaths in hospitals.

Two weeks ago, a care home in Sheffield invited Sky News in to see the severity of the crisis they are dealing with – it prompted the government to promise to address the problems.

But Nicola Richards, the director of Palms Row Health Care, which operates three homes in Sheffield, confirmed to Sky News on Saturday that they have now lost 15 of their residents to the virus.

She explained that promises of help had still not materialised, and added: “As a team we are just fighting day-to-day to get through it.

“We are not seeing that [help] on the frontline, sadly. I listened to these words being said that there’s additional funding – we’ve not seen any of that, we have been in this for four weeks.”

The team has received the first proper delivery of protective equipment for staff, but Ms Richards says this still isn’t enough to spread between three busy care homes.

On Friday, she received a letter from Sheffield City Council confirming the general funding she receives will increase by 4.9%.

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“It is nowhere near enough – I need a further 20%,” she said.

“To be reading that letter when I’m counting deaths just feels…I feel totally unsupported, I feel our services are just not recognised for what we are doing on a daily basis….to get that is just unforgivable.”

The frustrations were echoed in Scarborough on the North Yorkshire coast, where Mike Padgham runs a small group of homes.

His teams have also been working flat out trying to manage staff sickness and protect their elderly residents.

He told Sky News: “I feel let down, I feel as though they [politicians] could do more.”

“I think the time for the blame and the finger pointing will come, we need to fight together and not fight each other during this pandemic.

“But I would say they are paying the price for not fixing the roof when the sun was shining in social care in the past.”

“In fact, it’s us, the people, who are paying the price for it.”

The true figures for deaths within social care are very difficult to work out.

Mandy Thorn, of the National Carers Association, told Sky News: “Because we’ve had so little testing of people who have very sadly died in care homes, it’s going to be very difficult to ever know the true numbers.

“People in care homes are vulnerable – they are in care homes – because in many cases, it’s the end of their lives, so its been very difficult to know whether those people who have sadly died, and each and everyone one of them is a tragedy, whether they are people who have died from COVID-19.”

The Department of Health and Social Care in Westminster has said it is working “around the clock” to give social care workers the equipment and support they need while also trying to publish accurate data on coronavirus-related deaths in care homes.

(c) Sky News 2020: Coronavirus: Exhausted care home staff still waiting for government support