Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 04 November 2020
I declare an interest as my mum is a resident in a care home and my wife and daughter work in the NHS.
I have never worked in a care home and have never been a resident in one. With that in mind, I have to relay what carers and those for whom they care have told me and try to put myself in their position.
Imagine that it is March of this year and that you are an 81-year-old patient in hospital. You have been there for six months and have been ready to go home for 12 weeks but have been told repeatedly that the reason why you cannot leave the hospital is that there is no care home place or package to support you. Imagine then being told at short notice that a place has become available and that you are moving today, although not to your own community, among the people you know, but many miles away, and that you have to move there, as it is the only place that is available.
Imagine watching TV on that same day and hearing that a virus that results in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of older people just like you is sweeping the world. You see the news bulletins that show multiple deaths at care homes across Europe, and the haunting image of undertakers removing bodies. Imagine then being discharged alone, with limited family contact and without an assessment of your needs and without being tested.
Imagine working in a care home on minimum wage, in a place that is regularly short staffed and has been for years. Imagine that you have to take in more residents and that the company that you work for cannot provide you with appropriate and safe PPE to protect you, keep your residents safe and allow you to do your job. Imagine that that company is registered in a tax haven, pays negligible corporation tax and posts regular, healthy profits. Imagine going home at night—every night—to see the news headlines of more and more people dying in care homes just like the one you work in.
Imagine reading newspaper reports of multiple care home deaths—such as happened on Skye—and wondering, “Are we next?” Imagine listening to politicians who claim that we have the best testing capacity in the world at a time when neither you nor the residents you care for have ever been tested. Imagine caring for Covid-positive people who have become seriously ill and then being told that they must not be admitted to hospital for treatment.
Imagine being Covid-clear as a patient in hospital but finding yourself ill from Covid a few days after you are moved to a care home. Imagine realising that, as you worked and tried to keep people safe, you were inadvertently spreading Covid because you had never been tested.
Imagine being vulnerable, living among new people you do not know and seeing the Covid crisis growing. Feeling scared and alone, you are unable to hold the hand of your son and daughter or even to speak to them. Imagine being asked to agree to a do not resuscitate order without a discussion with your general practitioner or your closest family. Imagine seeing your friends and neighbours—other residents—die without their family around them and being laid to rest with a handful of mourners.
Too many of our mums, dads and grandparents, our friends and our family have no need to imagine those things—they happened to them in Scotland in 2020, and that is to our eternal shame.
16:44