In defence of care homes

Blount Road Portsmouth

I am writing in response to the prime minister's recent comments about how he believed many care homes did not follow proper procedures on coronavirus.

As a CEO of a charity which delivers complex care and rehabilitation to clients in nursing and care home settings across Surrey and Kent, when the lockdown was first declared, I like many others in my field, had assessed the risk and decided to close down the hatches 10 days before the lockdown. This was based on best advice to me at the time.

The central advice for the first few weeks was confused and that was expected. This was a difficult, changing world both on environmental issues and progress of a disease we all knew little about.

This is uncharted territory for all of us and our outbreak plans have all been tested to the full.

We ask the PM on our behalf, to make the best decisions based on the best advice he has at the time. Some will be lifesaving, some may not. But we can only go with what we know, assess or believe is right for the safety of public, in the PM’s case or our clients in our case.

So what did we do?

We restricted staff going home, working elsewhere, limited visits to the homes, sent staff to work at home, isolated staff we felt maybe at risk, stopped families visiting, bought our own PPE. We knew the NHS had to have first call. We got supplies in ready, for isolation, changed our IT systems so communication to external world happened easily for many.

We held daily meetings to check on progress and review data, advice and expert views.

We ensured anyone who came from hospital, before testing was available, was isolated for 14 days in one room with the same staff supporting them.

We bought, at hugely inflated costs, hand sanitisers, test kits, not forgetting PPE, all in the absence of the first plans and any money kicking in.

We did this in line with the understandably, ever-changing, government advice, but our risk assessment has been client and staffsafety first.

If there was something essential that