Charlie Williams writes of the work of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice
Thank you for the opportunity to share our experiences with the All Party Parliamentary Group on Social Care on the important issue of Covid-19 in social care settings. Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice is a group of over 2,000 families bereaved by Covid-19. We are campaigning for lessons to be learned as quickly as possible in order to save lives and prevent others from going through the same pain we have. Devastatingly, we are gaining new members every day; recently this has been as many as 150 in the space of a week, and this is a stark reminder of the human cost of waiting until this pandemic is over to learn the necessary lessons.
Over 100,000 of our fellow citizens have now lost their lives to Covid-19, with around a third of these estimated to have been care home residents. One of those was my father, Vernute Williams, known to all as Rex. One of the Windrush generation and much loved by all who encountered him, he was an amazing man and his loss is deeply felt within our family and beyond. My father was bedbound, meaning the virus was effectively brought to him, in the very place where we thought he was safe.
But far from being safe within a protective ring, my father and other loved ones found themselves directly in harm’s way and we found ourselves helpless to protect them. Many have also lost loved ones who are likely to have contracted Covid-19 from carers in their own homes; an issue which has received comparatively little attention.
Too often during this pandemic, the voices of families have been silenced. Though our experiences have given us an insight into what went wrong and contributed to the loss of our loved ones, we have found little outlet to feed this into government decision-making or to be meaningfully involved in ensuring that lessons are learned.
And lessons must be learned. Though the emergence and rollout of vaccines offers hope of a light at the end of the tunnel and a way out of these dark days, recent weeks have shown us how unpredictable the course of this pandemic can be. Beyond this, we know that there is a strong chance this sadly won’t be the last pandemic we see in our lifetimes.
We would like to see the process of enabling bereaved families to have answers on why our loved ones, so patently vulnerable, were left so ill-protected intertwined with that of ensuring that the failings in the system that we’ve seen are not allowed to happen again. This isn’t about blame, it’s about transparency, accountability and learning. That’s why we’ve been calling for a statutory public inquiry with a rapid review phase focused on learning lessons fast since back in June last year. It’s hard not to question whether had one been instigated last summer we might not be welcoming newly bereaved members to our group on a daily basis with stories that look so similar to those of us who lost loved ones early on in the pandemic.
We welcome the opportunity our participation in the APPG Social Care brings to highlight some of the key issues we believe are in need of close scrutiny. In relation to care homes and social care, the specific areas we believe need thorough examination are:
The discharge of Covid-positive and untested patients into care homes and internal infection control protocols for dealing with the risk this poses to other residents
Levels, quality and usage of PPE within care homes and during home care visits
Testing of residents and staff, including within home care providers
Case isolation processes
Use of agency and zero-hour contract staff and the impact this has on infection risk
Adequacy of financial compensation and Statutory Sick Pay for low-paid staff needing to isolate
Availability of medical attention, treatment and palliative care to care home residents: some of our members loved ones were seen by GPs via Zoom before dying and hospital care was never considered for most
Opportunities for planning a good death: most of our members were unable to be with their loved ones when they passed and many were very distressed by the protocols around the handling of remains and funeral arrangements.
Decision making processes on Do Not Attempt Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation orders: members report failures to consult, or consulting people who clearly did not have capacity. Many only discovered these decisions had been made when they accessed the deceased’s medical notes
Transparency and accountability of care providers and an apparent focus on commercial sustainability over resident safety in numerous cases
We look forward to working together with the APPG Social Care to address these questions and more over the coming months.
Charlie Williams is a representative of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice. This organisation can be contacted at covidfamiliesforjusticeuk@gmail.com. Further information can be found on their website.
Comment articles may not reflect the views of the APPG on Adult Social Care.