Investigations into Covid care home deaths in Scotland are doing 'irreparable damage' to staff

Investigations into Covid-related deaths at more than 450 care homes in Scotland have been criticised as “wholly disproportionate” and are “causing irreparable damage to the professional integrity of nurses and carers”.

The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service’s dedicated Covid-19 Death Investigation Team (CDIT) is currently investigating the circumstances of coronavirus-related deaths in 474 care homes in Scotland.

The CDIT was set up last May after Lord Advocate James Wolffe QC said that all suspected or confirmed coronavirus deaths in care homes should be reported to the Crown Office, as well as deaths of people who may have caught the virus at their workplace.

Up till now the team has reportedly received 3,385 death reports as part of Operation Koper and the majority of those are thought to be linked to people who lived in care homes.

Scottish Care chief executive Donald Macaskill said that “Scottish Care continues to have major concerns about Operation Koper. We recognise that police officers are undertaking investigations as a result of a direction from the Crown Office acting under the personal instruction of the Lord Advocate”.

Care homes have been on the frontline during the pandemic with Covid-related deaths in care homes in the UK now topping 20,000. Some staff have gone into lockdown with residents in the care homes to protect them and many have worked extra hours and experienced deaths on a scale they haven’t seen before. The toll on them both mentally and physically has been huge.

Mr Macaskill added: “We believe these investigations are wholly disproportionate and are causing irreparable damage to the professional integrity of nurses and carers who are exhausted beyond measure in fighting the virus.”

He also expressed concern over the time care home staff and managers are having to spend on providing data and information for these investigations. “This would be challenging at the best of times but in the middle of a pandemic and with dozens of care homes fighting active outbreaks this has added to a real sense of exhaustion, dismay and disappointment,” he said.

Mr Macaskill believes care homes are not being treated the same as the NHS. “We are not aware of NHS staff being interviewed about every Covid death that takes place in a hospital even if patients have caught the virus which killed them when in an NHS setting and for unrelated reasons. We are not aware that there is a demand upon staff to respond to nearly three dozen questions, to provide extensive personal records and files for patients, which are taking frontline staff away from their duties of care and support in the middle of a pandemic,” he said.

He acknowledges that it is “critical and essential” that assurance is given to family and the wider community that everything was done to protect their loved ones but feels the Lord Advocate’s instructed Crown Office investigation has “both in its timing, extent and unequal treatment of the care home sector caused considerable distress”.

“We very much regret the Lord Advocate chose to treat the care home sector with this degree of disproportionate focus which has done little to enhance community assurance or indeed professional confidence,” he said.