An insight into the UK’s care home disaster — a cry for help.
I was forwarded a news email from a UK regional Care Providers’ Association today, sent to carers and care home managers. This is just the view of one small region in the UK. Whatever the government says, this is the result of what they are, or are not, doing. There is a huge gap between their words and actions, which is resulting in people dying.
Below is pasted from the care providers’ association newsletter:
Testing
As indicated previously, the national testing strategy is confused. The set-up with Deloittes is not working well and they are passing helpline queries back to PHE [Public Health England] & CQC [Care Quality Commission]. There appears to be too many views, too little leadership; CQC only stepped in to help. The Government testing app does not appear to work well and lacks functionality. A national care association leader has described the current arrangements as a disaster.
The backlog of testing has not been dealt with. Of 6,000 applications, 138 have been able to book.
Health & Social Care is some 2.5m people, of which about 500k are shielding. With testing now open to over 65s, the testing capacity of around 100k per day, will be, well, tested. Testing on demand is weeks away. There are 48 mobile units organised by PHE local.
