Caring for our vulnerable during a health crisis

appropriate support, doubling the number of people the council supports.

Mr Baines said: “I have staff working shifts seven days a week making sure people are getting the right support in terms of food, medicine or who are socially isolated – some of those people wouldn’t normally be supported by social care.”

Calderdale Council staff are in touch with care homes and other providers on a daily basis and support to care providers the council commissions services from includes sourcing PPE and even providing staff or payments for agency staff if illness leads to staff shortages.

As of April 24, the council was working with nine homes who are people showing symptoms of coronavirus or where there have been positive results.

“When we get access to testing the numbers might start to look different,” he said.

The council has been supporting testing work at a local site and a regional one at Leeds.

“It is important to stress what that test is, it works for peolole who are showing symptoms,” said Mr Baines.

Mr Baines’ team also support primary care providers, for example GP surgeries.

Sourcing and supplying Personal Protective Equipment to keep people working in social care safe in Calderdale has seen the council supporting other care providers.

A collective effort in Calderdale has also seen providers sharing supplies of equipment to make sure people are protected as much as possible in the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr Baines, said the council is working with care providers to make sure a 72-hour supply of PPE is available.

“We hope to ensure that at any one time each provider in social care and primary care – such as GPs – has at least 72 hours of PPE at any one time.

“What makes the industry nervous is if stocks go below 24hour provision.

“We are starting to get the regular supply by a mix of regular suppliers and using new offers where they meet standard, or helping providers by informing them what the standards are so they can make them,” said Mr Baines.

PPE is essential equipment to enable care to be undertaken, with many duties difficult to carry out with the need to abide by social distancing measures during the COVID-19 outbreak, said Mr Baines. This includes ensuring all carers and those sub-contracted had access to it, he added.

Calderdale’s partnership with the West Yorkshire Resilience Forum had resulted in a number of large scale drops of PPE and staff from his own directorate and leisure centre staff worked together to get the equipment out as soon as possible.

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“This has been the toughest of times but one of my proudest of times – the work people are doing is amazing.