The Guardian view on care work: a vocation that has been betrayed
The litany of government failures on social care during the Covid-19 emergency has become grimly familiar. But the mistakes bear repetition, as the latest figures record that close to 15,000 care home residents have died in England and Wales from the disease.
There is clear evidence that care homes were pressured into accommodating discharged hospital patients who had not been tested for coronavirus. Some turned out to be carrying it. Personal protective equipment was lethally slow to arrive. In some cases where homes did have functioning supply lines, these were commandeered to funnel PPE to hospitals. An absence of proper testing capacity meant care workers were operating in the dark as the virus spread. Access to hospital for residents was limited.
In the House of Commons on Tuesday, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, yet again insisted that “a protective ring” was thrown around the nation’s care homes from the start of this crisis. But before Mr Hancock spoke, MPs on the health select committee heard expert evidence outlining what such protection would truly look like. In South Korea, they were told, early testing of residents took place, followed by quarantine measures or hospitalisation of those infected. Not a single Covid-19 death has taken place inside a South Korean care home.
A future public inquiry will devote much of its time to these sins of commission and omission. But the structural neglect laid bare over the past weeks has deeper roots; it requires a response that goes beyond holding ministers to account, vital though that process will be.
This week a Guardian investigation revealed that agency workers, often on zero-hours contracts, may have inadvertently spread Covid-19 between care homes. To cope with an ongoing recruitment crisis, private care providers have long relied on a “bank” of agency carers to fill gaps. As care home staff have self-isolated, a bigger proportion of this reserve army has been deployed, in some cases, apparently, taking the virus with them.
Belatedly, the government has provided an extra £600m to allow care homes to fund additional staff, or pay agency workers to reduce the number of providers they visit. But this is a problem that should never have arisen. The recruitment crisis in care homes is in large part a result of rock-bottom levels of pay. It reflects a lack of societal recognition which is shaming, given the role care workers perform. The care of our vulnerable and elderly is a demanding vocation, and should be rewarded as such. High-quality training and well-paid, stable employment should come as a matter of course to those who choose it as a career. Zerohours employment contracts should have no place in the fragile ecology of this world, in which continuity and the quality of relationship between care workers and those cared for is fundamental.
Acute underfunding throughout the past decade, a second-class status compared to the NHS and unscrupulous profit-seeking by some private providers have combined to undermine the social care sector. Yes, the government must eventually answer for the grievous errors it has made in this crisis. But it is just as important that the age of the poorly paid zero-hours care worker, and all it symbolises about our past priorities, is consigned to history.