Coronavirus: Lack of PPE for care sector workers a 'grim reality'

The GMB Union told the Sunday National that the high death toll in the sector gave a drastic picture of the need for reform.

“Carers and service users are dying and the grim reality is that not every care worker will get through this first wave having received the proper PPE to do their job,” said Rhea Wolfson of GMB Scotland.

“Nor will there be an appropriate testing regime in place to mitigate spread, sustain services and save lives, while a mental health time bomb across the sector is also ticking.”

She said it was no exaggeration to say the staff were “sacrificing themselves for the greater good”.

“These workers will pay a terrible price. It is desperately sad because we know that staff – carers, nurses, domestics – who are fit and able to work through the peak of this crisis will do so, such is their dedication to their service users and their vocation, and it is no exaggeration to say they are sacrificing themselves for the greater good.”

Wolfson said there had to be “light at the end of the tunnel” for these “courageous” workers – a promise that what they were sacrificing for the rest of society today would be truly valued tomorrow.

She said that meant never going back to “business as usual”.

“It means reform in the social care sector and cementing its place at the heart of our society, where social care workers are properly recognised and rewarded for what they do.”

Wolfson pointed out that the challenges in the social care sector had been highlighted before the current crisis in last year’s Fair Work Convention report which warned about a sector mired in low pay, excessive working hours and precarious contracts of employment – and a “fundamentally unfair working environment delivered mainly on the backs of women earning less than £10 an hour”.

“Government must stop letting these workers down time and again,” said Wolfson.

“Ministers are far too relaxed about the majority of carers being paid the living wage, a minimum level of income to keep workers just out of poverty and no more – they talk of £9.30 an hour in terms of achievement rather than concern. Scotland needs to do so much better than this.”

The warning about the toll on care workers follows the launch of Scotland’s first human rights-based Charter for Bereavement.

Although it has been developed over the last 18 months by a coalition of organisations and individuals, Dr Donald Macaskill, chair of the Bereavement Charter Group, said it had become even more important as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, particularly as people were being denied a traditional funeral.

“We need to work out how post-Covid we are going to grieve because few of us will be left that don’t know people who have lost someone to the disease,” he said.

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IT is hoped the charter will help Scotland as a nation become more effective at supporting people to grieve. “We are launching this charter in very unusual times,” said Dr Macaskill. “The weeks and months ahead will require us all as a society to support one another to grieve for those who have died – our family, friends, neighbours and acquaintances. I hope that this charter and its guidance will help Scotland to be able to grieve.”

Macaskill, who is also CEO of Scottish Care said he was not only concerned about the current situation in care homes but was also very worried about home care workers.

“They are massively at risk,” he said. “If care homes are often described as the Cinderella service compared with hospitals, the home care sector must be Cinderella’s poor sister.

“We have thousands of people being supported to remain independent at home and they are exceptionally vulnerable to community contraction of the disease. “We are controlling as much as we can the transfer of disease into care homes but it is up to the general public to control the spread of the disease in the community.

“What we don’t want to see is for us to reduce the lockdown measures too quickly so that results in a large spike in community spread just when we are managing to reduce it in hospitals and care homes.

“We do have to remember the real strain that home care organisations and frontline home care workers are facing. They are putting themselves in positions of risk.”

Macaskill said age was not a predictor of whether people were more likely to contract the disease but said the elderly were more vulnerable because their immune systems weakened with age and the older people were, the more likely they were to have co-morbidities.

“This disease is no respecter of age but most people under the age of 70 can fight it without too much difficulty,” he said.

However he warned that this did not remove the fact that some younger people were unable to fight Covid-19, even those who seemed perfectly fit and healthy. Men appear to be particularly vulnerable.

“People are naïve if they think it is not going to touch them and they can carry on as normal,” he said.

“Normal has gone forever until we get an antibody test and vaccine.”

The Bereavement Charter can be found at www.scottishcare.org/bereavement

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