‘We health workers with children have been abandoned’
IRELAND was facing into the darkest period in its battle against Covid-19 in January when healthcare worker Clare Reilly realised she had no childcare for the week.
A senior physiotherapist attached to the cystic fibrosis clinic at St Vincent’s Hospital, she had spent the previous week working in a Covid-positive ward after an outbreak caused huge staff shortages.
“There was just a void there and I didn’t know what I was going to do,” she said.
A native of Warrenpoint, Co Down, now living in Dublin’s Raheny, she has two children Maebh (6) and Éanna (17 months) – but she and husband Ruairi have no family nearby to call on for support.
Her baby is with a childminder but with the schools closed at the time, she and her husband had been dipping into annual and unpaid leave to fill in the gaps.
After a desperate trawl for help, Rainbow’s End of Tír Na nÓg creches in Raheny agreed to open just to accommodate Maebh.
For a few weeks, she was the only child there and Clare said it was a “life saver” for her as she juggled collection times with her shifts.
But while childcare facilities reopen nationwide today, Ms Reilly believes the Government has let essential workers down badly by not keeping the schools open for their children, like they did in the UK.
“I think they’ve really done healthcare workers a huge disservice. In general, we have
accepted the biggest risk and we’re basically left completely abandoned when it comes to childcare,” she said.
“That was a complete and utter failure on the part of the Government and the unions.
“If I have to take unpaid leave, that’s taking services away from the frontline.”
Some 76pc of healthcare workers (HCW) in Europe are
women, making childcare a predominantly female issue.
She said stress levels have been high among her and her colleagues, as they scramble to juggle childcare with their commitments on the frontline.
Last month, a porter supervisor at St Vincent’s Hospital, Paul Leckie, died from Covid19.
Staff formed a guard of
honour for him outside the hospital and she said that the atmosphere was “hugely upsetting”.
“He didn’t go to work to die nor did anybody else standing there in that line,” she said.
“And yet we all assume that risk every day because that is our moral duty.
“I feel hugely let down by the Government’s inability to
see what’s happening on the frontline.”
While getting the vaccine recently “gave everyone a great sense of hope”, she says more supports are needed for HCW in the event of another lockdown.
“Everyone’s just wrecked. It’s that time of the year when the sun is re-emerging but we have had no daylight,” she said.