Don’t blame care homes for outbreak

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 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 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 is unchartered 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 life saving, some may not. We can only go with what we know, assess or believe is right for the safety of public. We took action in line with the, understandably, ever-changing government advice but our risk assessment has been client and staff safety first. This was at a time when we lost all our fundraising events, in one hit overnight, now predicted to lose £1m this year. But did we go out and say it’s your fault Prime Minister? No. We followed guidance and added additional levels of precaution ourselves. We were grateful for the small amounts of resource we have been given but we continue to rely on self-help for survival.

The NHS has had rightful praise but the social care teams need equal praise; we all had the same risk and the same transmission happened in hospital as in care homes. We have had no Covid cases transpire in any of our services, we have very fragile clients and we take directly from hospitals throughout the pandemic to ensure the NHS bed capacity was managed.

Our charity now takes longterm post ventilated patients with Covid for rehabilitation as their journey is complex and long, we see ourselves as part of the NHS pathway and are proud of that. Don’t isolate us even more now. We made decisions based on science advice and risk assessment.

Karen Deacon

CEO, Queen Elizabeth’s Foundation for Disabled People

Derek Munton

City Way, Rochester