Scale of care watchdog alerts revealed

Scotland’s care watchdog was warned more than 170 times about staff shortages at care homes amid the coronavirus crisis, an investigation has found.

BBC Scotland’s Disclosure programme discovered that between April 3 and June 17, when care homes were required to inform the Care Inspectorate of staff shortages, 179 notifications were issued.

Freedom of information requests by the programme revealed 30 red warnings were sent between these dates, indicating an insufficient number of staff to properly meet residents’ needs.

Care homes issued 149 amber alerts in the same period, indicating resources were stretched and staffing levels were close to affecting the quality of care.

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Our care homes were effectively thrown to the wolves, and the virus has ravaged some of them.

MEG HILLIER MP

According to the latest figures from the National Records of Scotland, between March 16 and July 19 there were 2,365 (54%) more deaths in Scotland’s care homes than average.

Covid-19 was the underlying cause in 1,873 (79%) of these excess deaths.

The Scottish Government said in a statement: “This is the biggest public health crisis we have faced in our lifetimes and the impact on care homes around the world has been profound.

“It is right and proper that decisions taken during this process face scrutiny in the fullness of time but we are committed to protecting life and protecting people from this virus, and all our efforts are going towards doing everything we can to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 in Scotland.”

Meanwhile, a House of Commons report has ruled that advising hospitals to discharge thousands of patients into care homes without knowing if they had coronavirus was a “reckless” and “appalling” policy error.

Discharging around 25,000 patients to free up beds was an example of the UK Government’s “slow, inconsistent and at times negligent” approach to social care, the cross-party Public Accounts Committee said.

It added that it was “concerned” that the Department of Health and Social Care had continued with the policy “even once it was clear there was an emerging problem”.

Hospitals in England were asked on March 17 to discharge patients, but patients did not require a coronavirus test prior to discharge until April 15.

Committee chairwoman MP Meg Hillier said: “Our care homes were effectively thrown to the wolves, and the virus has ravaged some of them.”