Is our PM, infallible and free of any blame?

Petunia a good balanced post. Some posters would obviously prefer to live in a nanny state and take no responsibility for their actions.
Care homes are largely privately run, employing managers responsible for procurement of necessary supplies including PPE. They also have the right to refuse to take infected persons. They are responsible for the safety and wellbeing of their residents and are extremely well paid for this duty.
Boris did not criticise the wonderful care home staff, his criticism was of some of the care home management which has, in many cases been poor.
Governments world wide have struggled to contain this highly infectious virus. Our government have undoubtedly made some mistakes in virus control in our tiny free country with a huge population but have also done very many good things. Blaming the government for everything is unrealistic. We all need to step up and take responsibility for our actions including care homes.
On a personal level, I moved my own mother from a poorly run care home on two occasions to a very well run establishment all privately owned, so I know that good and bad exist.
We have an acquaintance who runs a chain of large care homes who has told us that he refused patients from our local hospital who had tested positive for covid-19, so I also know that that is possible.

The timing is appalling too. Just today, after the report on Johnson, there was a news item on staff coming out of a care home after having lived there for three months to look after the residents. I acknowledge that some care homes, and some carers are inadequate, the same as some nurses are ( although one is supposed to believe they are all 'angels'), but the facts remain that government advice led to many unneccessarily premature deaths and no amount of whataboutery can get around this. I expect that sometime soon we will see a post telling us how much worse it would have been had Corbyn been in charge. Johnson has shown his colours early; this attack is on the carers and care homes, next will start the invidious drip, drip of how perhaps, hospitals could have managed covid19 better, then there will be the blame on protesters/beach goers/pub visitors, although he already has a head start on that one as the tabloid press and its supporters are already using that one. This country is being gaslit, we are all being blamed and blaming each other while the true culprits of the excessive and unnecessary and premature deaths are Johnson and his cabinet.

granny 23, how right you are. just checked with OH, the full costs for last year were £43500.

Gajahgran

Unfortunately the very sad fact is that care homes, their management and to some extent local government do have a duty of care to their residents. They are responsible for the safety of those residents and that includes PPE. The whole system needs overhauling especially in regard to funding but I believe it will always be the case that those that charge for providing care will always be responsible for the safety of those they care for. Vulnerable residents would have had letters indicating they should be shielding and care homes should have made sure that they were.
There were many success stories where residents were adequately shielded and kept safe.

I don't find your argument holds water Gajahgran, I'm afraid. True, care homes do have a duty of care and should have a reasonable stock of PPE but I don't think any country has expected them to have enough for a pandemic. Certainly our government did not instruct them to hold that sort of amount. Also, if when homes did order it, it was commandeered by the Government for the NHS, what are the homes supposed to do when that happens?

We now seem to be muddling up what is and has been done to split up the Care service and privatise it and what Care needs in the future with what went wrong under the pandemic. Two different issues surely, although one may inform the other.

Our PM putting his foot in it again. No doubt he will wriggle out of it. What if it was my relative sent like a lamb to the slaughter, and I can't forget that poor lady in jail in Iran either.

My DH is resident in a Council run care home, where all staff and residents are tested weekly on Tuesdays and I get a phone call on a Thursday to say that all have tested negative, (so far, touching wood). They have had ample supplies of PPE since the start. Any one showing symptoms of any illness is barrier nursed and confined to their rooms, no visitors at all have been allowed, with the exception of the GP and District Nurse. My OH who suffered a TIA 3 weeks ago was ambulanced to and from the Hospital for a scan and tests but not admitted there, was tested, returned to Care Home and kept in isolation, now fully recovered and back to his old self. There have been NO Covid cases in the Home and any staff showing slight symptoms, (although tested negative) have stayed at home for 2 weeks, while other staff have worked double shifts to cover.

Petunia I think your information is well out of date e.g. Care Homes cost from £25000 to £40000 really. DH's bog standard one costs just under £43,000 PA and that is after the Free personal care element has been paid by the Scottish Government.

Just listened to the Mark Adams Today interview again. He said that most Care Homes had staff and residents tested once after 28th May, it is only now that the government has committed to weekly testing of staff and patients.

So that clears up my confusion.

If anyone is interested in listening to the interview it starts at 1 hr. 10 mins. in.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000kp4w

Everyone knows that the test is 'uncomfortable', surely? The extreme 'discomfort' it involves has caused many to question the efficacy of self administered pillar 2 testing.

MaizieD

One can only assume that it was private testing paid for by the care home, or, it might have something to do with the statement from the DHSC in this Guardian article of 28th May:

“We announced £600m to help tackle the spread of coronavirus, including by limiting staff movement between care homes, as well as £1.3bn to cover alternative accommodation to isolate residents. We are also testing all care workers and residents, regardless of symptoms, and delivering millions of items of PPE to the frontline.”

Which is slightly puzzling in view of the more recent news report I posted earlier. Were they testing from 28th May or only from now?

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/28/government-rejected-radical-lockdown-england-care-homes-coronavirus

It is a private home where ACs friend works and whilst she is grateful to be tested she has commented on how uncomfortable the test is.

Unfortunately the very sad fact is that care homes, their management and to some extent local government do have a duty of care to their residents. They are responsible for the safety of those residents and that includes PPE. The whole system needs overhauling especially in regard to funding but I believe it will always be the case that those that charge for providing care will always be responsible for the safety of those they care for. Vulnerable residents would have had letters indicating they should be shielding and care homes should have made sure that they were.
There were many success stories where residents were adequately shielded and kept safe.

One can only assume that it was private testing paid for by the care home, or, it might have something to do with the statement from the DHSC in this Guardian article of 28th May:

“We announced £600m to help tackle the spread of coronavirus, including by limiting staff movement between care homes, as well as £1.3bn to cover alternative accommodation to isolate residents. We are also testing all care workers and residents, regardless of symptoms, and delivering millions of items of PPE to the frontline.”

Which is slightly puzzling in view of the more recent news report I posted earlier. Were they testing from 28th May or only from now?

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/28/government-rejected-radical-lockdown-england-care-homes-coronavirus

MaizieD

^all staff and residents have been regularly tested.^

How have they managed that, GG13 when regular testing has only just been introduced in care homes?

News item from 4 days ago:

www.msn.com/en-xl/news/other/care-homes-will-get-regular-coronavirus-testing/ar-BB16hfzQ

No idea, but she has had several tests as have the residents.

Thank you for that info GranddadBrian.

all staff and residents have been regularly tested.

How have they managed that, GG13 when regular testing has only just been introduced in care homes?

News item from 4 days ago:

www.msn.com/en-xl/news/other/care-homes-will-get-regular-coronavirus-testing/ar-BB16hfzQ

I have had the opportunity of reading several fantastic report not actioned by Downing Street that are still available online from Leading respected charities. Before anybody talks about hindsight read them, they were all written before Coravirus but highlighted likely affects of deep austerity cuts in Care and support services. Then tell us the Gov could not have prevented any deaths. You only have to look back to winter of 2017/18 and the flu epidemics, when the winter deaths reached 49,000 plus, followed by complete inertia by the Government.
Age uk, Jos Rowntree Foundation, Ageing Better, are just three of many charities raising concerns about issues that are being ignored. I raised a few on Gransnet re substandard homes and was ridiculed by the usual RW brigade. Pardon me if I now play a lower profile, but coming up to 90, I cannot any longer stand those who try to defend the indefensible.

The notion that care homes should be money making businesses rather than social responsibility surely is questionable and no one has addressed that issue.

I would agree to some extent MayBee but I think it is also due to the redirection of PPE, ordered by the Care Homes but sent to the NHS. I'm not saying the NHS shouldn't have had the PPE but that the organisation of suitable stores for such an outbreak was cut and therefore the NHS was not in a position to be ready.

As others have spoken of their own experience I will repeat mine. My mother died, in her home, on 16 February after a few days illness. No one talked about Coronavirus but by the time we went to collect the things from her room some days later we were allowed to go to her room otherwise there was a ban on visitors in case there was a virus in the home.

On 24 March, lockdown began with people ordered not to leave their homes at all except for "essential" reasons, which didn't include visits to care homes.

Finally, on 2 April another document from the Department of Health and Social Care said that "family and friends should be advised not to visit care homes, except next of kin in exceptional situations such as end of life".

Add to that the facts about PPE being requisitioned; the privatisation and therefore splintering the system carried out by Conservative governments; the lack of testing and the returning of untested patients to the homes and there is, in my opinion, no way this could be kept out of all care homes.

This cannot be blamed on those running or working in the care homes; it was government policy.

Of course, not to mention that Cummings is very up for the deaths of as many pensioners as possible. They don’t care about the poor. We are just a drain on the economy. The more of us that are dead, the less pension cost.

They cut benefits and don’t care when the poor die. Why would they care when pensioners die? Other than the bad press, they don’t give a damn.

*beverly10
KaEllen
Could have had etc etc. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.*

beverly10: health experts gave governments, both here and abroad, very serious warnings about the corona virus from January onwards. The rest is politics - governments made their different decisions, and 'our Boris' decided to go for the idiotic idea of the population acquiring 'herd immunity', until someone told him this would mean 200 000 deaths.

Nothing to do with hindsight!

The reason why there were so many deaths in care homes is mainly due to lack of testing. So the blame for those deaths surely lies with those that stopped testing and then spent an awfully long time getting testing going again. imo

I don't think any of the nastiness towards care home workers will get Johnson off the hook if that is the intention.

Hopefully, as I have said many times before, their will be a judicial review. Some people will still believe none of it is the governments fault but at least the truth will be shown.

Excellent post Petunia. What you describe accurately reflects my experience when my mother was in a care home. The care home owners take huge sums of money and put very little back into staffing or patient resources. The care homes were responsible for infection control and that would include providing adequate PPE.
Most of the care home staff were absolutely lovely and going the extra mile to look after patients. There were some staff unfortunately who were lazy and clearly in the wrong job. The management were obviously not up to speed with training where the deficiences of these staff would have come to light.

I think Adams has summed it up precisely ggteenth

No one is ignoring Petunia. Her post just seems irrelevant, in the main, to what Johnson has said.

I can only agree with what Mark Adams, chief executive of social care charity Community Integrated Care, he was "unbelievably disappointed" by Mr Johnson’s remarks and called them ‘clumsy’ and ‘cowardly’. I find it hard to see how they can be seen as anything else unless, in an attempt to do anything to protect Johnson, his followers are equally clumsy and cowardly in trying to detract from the statement by talking about anything else other than it.

Mark Adams told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: To be honest with you, if this is genuinely his view, I think we’re almost entering a Kafkaesque alternative reality, where the government sets the rules, we follow them, they don’t like the results, they then deny setting the rules and blame the people that were trying to do their best.

I doubt any of us could sum it up better.

Good post Petunia, one of our AC friends works in a care home, they have had PPE from day one, and so far not one case of Covid-19 all staff and residents have been regularly tested.

My dear friends Mum has died of Covid which she picked up in hospital after a fall in her care home and was discharged back into her care home onto what they are calling the isolation floor. They have had very few cases in an extremely large private facility.

The Government have not got everything right.

Like all things in this world some care homes are better than others.

Have to agree