The start of my week was dominated by getting more PPE and essential supplies to our local care homes and the agencies who provide social care work.
Whilst the NHS has, with some exceptions, had enough supply, the social care network is fragmented. Our County Council commission services from care homes but do not own the setting. We now have a plan in place which will ensure that the County Council take over the responsibility for PPE distribution. My role is to help the County Council to get this PPE from the centre to supply to these settings. The Government need to know how much of this precious resource has been used and how much more is needed. After some initial difficulties providing this data, we now have a better approach to reporting local need. Along with other MPs in East Sussex, I spoke to Ministers to request more PPE for our county. This was duly dispatched on Wednesday night. It is vital this now goes to the care providers most in need.
The change in testing should give social care staff more confidence. Patients leaving hospital for care homes will be tested for the virus. Patients with virus-related issues will be directed to specific care homes where the PPE and protective needs are much greater. This will give more confidence to all other care homes. Testing will now be conducted in care home for residents to further increase confidence and detection.
These are welcome changes which I have been calling for. Once again, the disparity between the social care sector and the NHS is stark. After this epidemic is behind us, we need to make changes. With more and more care provided at home, those in care homes are more likely to be patients than residents. They tend to have acute health and nursing needs. The NHS has one core set of values and has complete ownership over its wards, its staff and how patients are nursed. Of course, the NHS can decide to buy in from the private sector as and when needed. Care homes lack a centralised approach and this outbreak has shown how hit and miss the situation has been. Whilst national NHS spending has been maintained, it has not been as generous to social care provision. I am increasingly forming the view that the NHS should take over the running of care homes. I do not tend to call for nationalisation but this epidemic has reinforced my view that the system does not currently work and their is a two-tier approach to care.
Turning care homes towards the NHS would refocus the efforts of our County Council on the other core responsibilities, such as highways, community services and education, which struggle to compete with the social care focus. Funding centrally, as with other NHS investment, would remove the anomaly which sees areas with the higher numbers of elderly residents raise the lowest Council Tax (which largely funds social care) because retirement areas tend to have lower Council Tax bands.
We also need to inject more money into the system and set up an insurance model, as they have in Germany, so we better save for our future care needs. More money will mean less inheritance for children. We’ve failed to have a proper conversation on this front. If there’s one good thing which could come from this crisis, it is a need to stop the decades-long talk about social care reform and to start delivering it.
