Covid in Scotland: Teachers asked to work in Glasgow care homes as staff hit by Omicron

Galaxy

I have managed care homes all my life Josianne but in the last few years I have moved into a specialist job in schools ( not teaching) it's why I know the skills and actually the culture are worlds apart.

I'm glad somebody understands what I was going on about.

The private care homes here were the ones that had the highest cases of covid way back at the start.One local woman went to the media when she wasn't "allowed" to use PPE unless the manager actually said so,this "manager" kept it locked up .It has since been taken back into public ownership as has the home on Skye where the owner/manager was bringing staff in from areas of England although it wasn't allowed at that time .
In ,y opinion care of the elderly should not be privatised ,simply because shareholders profits become more important than the welfare of the elderly who pay the bloomin wages .

Yes that's a fair point we had a trained cook and a cleaner back in the day. But we were very careful even about having volunteers because it was to be brutal another person the children had to cope with in their own home.

That is true galaxy re amount of people. I do think in my daughters house though they would be grateful of a cleaner that worked for several hours a week instead of expecting the staff to support my very unwilling daughter to do it!

The NHS has recruitment difficulties at Healthcare Support worker level as well, so if the care sector did become part of the NHS it wouldn’t resolve the manpower shortages.

And actually in my experience I would rather have two trained care staff than five people who could help with the dishes. Particularly for children with disabilities more bodies around the place is not at all helpful.

I have managed care homes all my life Josianne but in the last few years I have moved into a specialist job in schools ( not teaching) it's why I know the skills and actually the culture are worlds apart.

Galaxy

Yes it's better than nothing but actually the attitude that anyone can do it is partly why we are in this position in the first place. Caring for the elderly and those with disabilities is a skill that actually not that many people possess. I have managed care services for a long time, I would be an absolutely terrible teacher and I am sure many teachers would be terrible carers. We should have never let the situation get to this. Many of us who work in care or who receive care have been talking about this for a long time.

Don't put yourself down Galaxy in terms of helping in a school. I'm sure you could put up exciting board displays, walk round the playground chatting to the kids, pour out the drinks, mix up the paints, do photocopying, etc! All valuable stuff to relieve the class teachers.
In care homes similarly they need precisely people to muck in and do jobs not necessarily requiring skills.

Perhaps. I am trying to think through why I reacted against that suggestion. I usually had a number of nurses on my team, and they had skills which I didn't possess and I ansolutely used those skills to provide higher quality care for the children with complex needs. I wonder if I feel care would become a 'poor corner' of the NHS and my experience is that when organisations try to do everything their core offer often suffers.

Thanks Galaxy. Preventive medicine is in some important respects indistinguishable from education. Patients of GPs are encouraged to be active in their own medical care as much as possible. Children at school learn life skills. The suddenly-acquired public understanding of infection control and immunology, together with the strange specialist lexicon , is astounding.

Would you say that your concern centres on how local administration is better than central administration?

I am not sure about that, the best care homes I have worked in (children with disabilities not elderly care) have been run by the local authority or by large charities (the likes of Barnardos) but we were also doing increasingly medical tasks.
There is something that makes me react instinctively against being part of the NHS, perhaps because the majority of children in our care werent ill. Sorry that doesnt answer your question well.

Galaxy, do you reckon the solution to the care crisis is to include care homes and cared -for people as patients of the NHS?

Yes it's better than nothing but actually the attitude that anyone can do it is partly why we are in this position in the first place. Caring for the elderly and those with disabilities is a skill that actually not that many people possess. I have managed care services for a long time, I would be an absolutely terrible teacher and I am sure many teachers would be terrible carers. We should have never let the situation get to this. Many of us who work in care or who receive care have been talking about this for a long time.

Yes, well said PaddyAnne " Well done too! I bet amateurs like you can teach a lot of useful knowledge.

Well said, Casdon It’s not rocket science. Anyone with a caring nature and fully qualified with common sense are being asked if they would be a pair of willing hands during a pandemic.

Stop nit picking Growstuff People who feel they are capable of helping out will do so. Those who really feel they would be no help, which I appreciate as there are those who know this is something they can’t do, won’t. No one is being forced for the umpteenth time.

Well said Paddyann.

Good heavens. It's a Christmas miracle, but I completely agree with paddyann on this!

No one is being forced to do this they have been asked to volunteer IF they think they can help .Surely we saw tens of thousands of volunteers in the past 20 months in roles they would have had no experience of.
If I was in a better frame of mind I'd do it,I'm not "trained" but I did look after a doubly incontinent mother for 12 years and I'm sure there are many just like me out there who would have hated their elderly relatives to be left to sit in their own waste if someone could help .
I dont understand this "teachers are a special case" thing are they not just humans like the rest of us who would willingly help where they can

Growstuff replied to me:

"Quite frankly, no vulnerable person should ever be washed and fed by an "amateur" with no training. Even these so-called basic tasks require skill."

I agree. However I imagine homes are so short staffed that it's better to be fed , hydrated, and washed by a biddable amateur than not at all. Teachers are able to accept instructions and use their initiative and power of observation.

I understand what you mean Hetty58 and as we know, private schools can often have a week or two longer than state schools at Christmas anyway, so it could work. The week could actually be taken from the lengthy summer holidays by going back earlier to the new school year. Most parents are working at home anyway from January 4th and this is the easiest time to entertain the kids at home because they have their presents and good tv to watch. It would require teachers to rehash their programmes of study a bit, but it is not unsurmountable if it helps the care sector.

growstuff and GagaJo, you misunderstand. The proposal I heard had nothing to do with online learning and set work - or schools being staffed. It was simply a case of extending the Christmas holidays - quite alarming!

I'm surprised that so many of you feel that care workers are highly trained. They do most of their training in work - and there's quite a large turnover of staff.

I saw so many things go wrong with my mother's care, neglectful, idiotic and potentially dangerous too.

If local authority care homes want people to do the "skivvy" jobs (ie those which require minimum training), they should have been thinking about recruitment policies for years - not guilt tripping people to step into the breach.

Care work is a skilled role. Skills should be rewarded and appropriately rewarded financially. It's not something which any Tom, Dick, Harry (or female equivalents) can be picked off the street to do.

Aveline

Did you not see that I already said it was not just teachers that they were appealing for, that they would be paired with experienced staff and would receive enhanced rates. A perfectly reasonable request. Might suit some people very well. It's only short term.

Yes, I read your post. I still think it's a daft idea.

Did you not see that I already said it was not just teachers that they were appealing for, that they would be paired with experienced staff and would receive enhanced rates. A perfectly reasonable request. Might suit some people very well. It's only short term.

I wasn't in that position GagaJo, but I was in communication with many teachers for whom that was the case.

I did what I could (which wasn't a lot) but I provided quality online resources for free for teachers who didn't have the time to work miracles.

There is no way in the world that teachers could take on an extra role (in addition to online and face-to-face teaching) without something suffering. As it is, Nadhim Zahawi has been pleading with retired teachers to go back into the classroom to help out.

Quite frankly, if teachers are so valued in an emergency, it begs the question why their terms and conditions and pay are relatively so poor and why the Daily Mail Mail (and some others) are so keen to smear them.