Care home providers will be stretched with new visiting regime and vaccine, warn leaders

Care leaders are urging the government to provide greater financial support to help care homes cope as they face a mountain of work to enable visiting to resume and the vaccination programme to begin.

Earlier this week, the government pledged relatives of care home residents in England will be able to hug their loved ones if they test negative for coronavirus and wear protective equipment.

The government is also committed to providing twice-weekly testing to up to two visitors by Christmas, and care home staff will receive twice-weekly tests by the end of December and resident testing will be increased to once a week.

On top of this, the government announced earlier this month older care home residents and care home staff are likely to be top of the list for a new vaccine, which could be rolled out in the next few weeks.

But the Independent Care Group (ICG) and The National Care Forum (NCF) say the health secretary has underestimated the reality of introducing twice-weekly tests which will welcome up to two visits per resident and warn of huge extra pressure on homes when the vaccination programme begins next month.

'The vaccine is wonderful news but a huge logistical and administrative burden on care staff'

Mike Padgham chair of the ICG said: “With the new visitor testing regime coming in and very soon the vaccination programme, care homes are going to be at full stretch and many are worried about how they are going to cope.

“Everyone is delighted to be reintroducing visiting again as residents and their families and friends have been apart too long. But to suggest this will be easy and won’t entail care and nursing homes needing more staff is wide of the mark and out of touch.”

“The vaccine is wonderful news and we cannot wait to protect our residents, but there will be a huge logistical and administrative burden on care staff to help carry out the vaccination of residents and staff.”

The NCF estimates the ‘average 50-bed care home will need to administer an additional 1,350 tests per month minimum. Even on extremely conservative estimates, for example, an average 20 minutes, this still adds an additional 450 hours to the testing regime in a single home, or an average of nine hours additional time on testing per bed of a care home per month.’

Vic Rayner chief executive of NCF said: “The truly wonderful news about the vaccine and the seemingly extraordinary news about the new elasticity and capacity of the testing regime are overshadowed by the giant elephant in the room of cost and resource.

“It is a real cause for concern that the government feels able to announce a quadrupling of the testing regime within individual care homes without even considering any extra resource to do this.

"Either they have so little knowledge of what happens in a care home that they assume this can happen without additional resource, or conversely so little respect for what people are doing and the care that others need that they think that this can happen without impact on the care provided.”

'We are going to need some help right now'

The ICG has invited the health secretary to visit a care home on the frontline to “see for himself the impact these new tests” will have.

Mr Padgham said: “If Mr Hancock knows social care as he claims he does; he should know the extra resources this will need and would fight for greater financial support for the sector.

“Care providers want to do it and will do it, but they will have to find extra staff resources and for many that will be extremely tough.

There has also been criticism towards the government for hastily introducing legislation to prevent staff moving between care homes which in turn will further stretch care workers and staff in care homes.

Mr Padgham said: “This shows how much interest there was in the consultation and how much understanding of the impact it would have on the ability of care and nursing homes to keep staffing levels up during COVID-19.

“We already have 100,000 care vacancies on any one day in the sector, and struggling with staff absences due to coronavirus. Now [they] won’t be able to move staff between homes or use agency staff easily.

“Care and nursing homes are at full stretch caring for their residents in the midst of the second wave of COVID-19. If we are to manage this new visiting regime and the vaccinations on top of that, we are going to need some help, and some help right now.”

To read Viv Rayner's blog 'COVID-19 Winter Plan Score Card: Science 10 – Maths 0' go to:

https://www.nationalcareforum.org.uk/blog/covid-19-winter-plan-score-card-science-10-maths-0/