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CARE CAMPAIGN FOR THE VULNERABLE LEADING THE CALL FOR A PUBLIC INQUIRY ON THE HANDLING OF CARE HOMES DURING THE COVID PANDEMIC

It is absolutely essential that a public enquiry provides answers for many grieving families who believe their loved ones living in care homes were sacrificed with the aim of ’not overwhelming’ the NHS. That view was compounded further when all relatives were excluded from care home visiting under lockdown rules. Despite their despair and anxiety about a possible decline in standards of care - given care home staff were under severe pressure and often isolating - The government and the Regulator failed to intervene.

No insistence that providers adopt safety monitoring systems to ensure third party audit, no appointment of family members as primary carers and in many cases not even a window visit facilitated to bring some comfort to the vulnerable older person.

Unless a public enquiry is progressed, the electorate will know that little or no value is attached to older vulnerable people and that in subsequent periods of the severe societal challenge such as a pandemic, older people are simply expendable. Many residents died prematurely and needlessly because not even some basic safeguards were afforded them.