Inquest highlights care home pressures

Cedar Grange residential home in Launceston

AN inquest into the death of three care home residents in Cornwall has shone a light on how the whole social care system came under immense stress during the Covid pandemic and was left to fend for itself and battle with ever changing Government guidelines.

Leonard Austin Mitchell, 79, Geoffrey Walsh Turpin, 85, and Graham Binney, 81, all died at Cedar Grange care home in Launceston, in March and April 2021 after contracting Covid19 during the second wave of the global pandemic.

The four-day inquest heard how the three men either had Alzheimer’s or had suffered strokes and had ailments linked to old age, but died within a few days of each other when the virus swept through the care home. It previously heard that safeguarding concerns had been raised about care at the facility in the period surrounding their deaths.

The inquest heard how there were fears that Covid might have been brought into Cedar Grange by staff members who fell ill, which senior coroner for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly Andrew Cox said was impossible to establish. It was also heard how PPE and lateral flow and PCR tests became daily and weekly rituals for staff and residents after a first wave of Covid in 2020 hit Cedar Grange hard. During that first wave 14 members of staff quit their job leaving the care home under even more stress with short staffing pressures taking their toll.

The hearing, held in Truro, which concluded on Thursday, heard how testing had become so time consuming and onerous that at the peak of the pandemic, some 2,400 Covid tests were carried out at Cedar Grange every month, adding a further administrative burden on the whole team.

Anne Thomas, the former CEO of Cornwall Care, the charity which operated Cedar Grange before being sold by Cornwall Council to Sanctuary

Housing at the end of 2022, told the inquest that she had been begging for volunteers and for help from the NHS and from the local authority to help her team cope with the increasingly burdensome Covid testing regimen imposed by ever changing directives from central Government.

However no help was forthcoming, so much so, that she told the inquest that she felt care homes had been “left to fend for themselves” and were not as well favoured as the NHS, adding: “Everyone in my team gave their all to get through this critical incident.”

Mr Cox said no-one should blame the staff who left in 2020 as the pandemic had ravaged through the UK and “it is right to remember the fear that existed at the time and the pressure that care homes were working under providing residential care to dementia patients with challenging behaviours”.

He added: “It is vital work of considerable importance. It’s work that is often unnoticed and unheralded. Launceston at the time was a pandemic hotspot and Covid guidance’s from the Government changed repeatedly and caused confusion.”

The inquest heard from staff members at the care home who said at the beginning of the pandemic they would go in, do a LTF test and carry on if it was negative. It was after the first wave of Covid that PCR testing was implemented and staff would go home if testing positive.

Mr Cox said “everyone had been giving their all in a professional manner in unprecedented times”.

He said that when the second outbreak of Covid at the care home happened it was reported to both the CQC and CC quickly and insisted there was no issue of neglect or misconduct.

Mr Cox concluded all three cases were death from natural causes.

Google Maps >