Care Home Chaos

It's partly about visits to people in care homes. Visits are limited right now because of the pandemic. A small number of relatives (about 40, I see on the BBC website) want more freedom to visit. I wonder how many people live in care homes. Is 40 a representative number?  

It's awful, this. And I would love to have some guidance on it. I'm not looking for political guidance - I regard both the Scottish Government and Dr Donald McAskill and Robert Kilgour (on behalf of care home owners) as offering political advice. 

The issue for me is people.

We all know people who have relatives in care homes. They want what's best for them and they are afraid for their relatives' future in this pandemic. At the same time, people want to visit their relatives and we know it's good for them to have visits. 

And at the back of everyone's mid should be the understanding that eventually we will all approach the stage where we will need to be in a care home. 

How do we manage this? Because we're not managing it well right now. 

On the one hand, I'm outraged that care homes for elderly people have been handed over to private companies. 84% of care homes for the elderly in Scotland are privately owned. They make huge amounts of money from a lot of families. Too many of them are managed by multi-national companies based in tax havens and are thus unaccountable to the Scottish taxpayer. 

Let's be clear: private care homes have not stepped up to the mark in the pandemic. They have failed to manage their staff well. For example, the owners of the Home Farm Care Home in Skye brought staff in to an area that was Covid-free from the south of England and then expected the NHS to handle the infection problem. Of course, the NHS did handle the problem. But 14 people died unnecessarily. 

The problem has been handled by the NHS taking Home Farm into state ownership. That was a political decision in my opinion and shouldn't have happened, but it's done and no doubt the residents will feel more secure. But it must leave many other care home residents wondering if a similar solution can be found for them. Can the Scottish Government afford to do that? 

These care homes are private establishments but they spent a lot of time in the first phase of the pandemic complaining that the Scottish NHS had not provided them with PPE. The Scottish Government wasn't under any obligation to do that. The care homes could have bought PE for their staff but didn't.  

Now they complain they can't get Covid tests for their staff, although they could buy them too. 

Meanwhile, a lot of these establishments continue to employ mainly women and on low pay. They are in fact perpetuating the scandal of low pay among women in Scotland. 

Care homes say they are fully staffed to the levels required by the Care Commission (that is a legal necessity), but it seems they can't afford to employ nursing staff to carry out Covid tests themselves or let them take in people discharged from hospital who have been tested twice and found not to have the virus. That''s just dodging the responsibility, in my opinion. 

So what do we do about visits to care homes? Let families visit and hope they don't bring the virus with them? Set up outside facilities that let visits take place in - what? - tents or pergolas? Knowing some residents, many with dementia, may feel completely lost there? Or ask private care home managers to step up and take responsibility for once?