Care home hit by recruitment crisis forced to use staff with Covid

A care home in Wales was forced to use staff who have Covid-19 because it had nobody else to look after its 12 residents.

The Caledonia care home in Holyhead has 11 residents with coronavirus, with its owner revealing that two members of staff who had tested positive for the virus agreed to work the night shift so they could care for residents also with the virus.

Owner Ann Bedford said: “Even before Covid impacted on us, residential homes were struggling to recruit and now there is absolutely no spare capacity in the system, nowhere to turn.

“I have never known a situation as bad as we faced over the last weekend. As a matter of course we have contingency plans in place to cope in emergencies but even these buckled under the strain. My heart sinks when I think about for the weeks and months ahead.”

She added: “I cannot praise enough the two staff who volunteered to come in despite having the virus.

“I feel desperately sorry that we were in a position where we had no choice other than to call on them.

“The night-shift is tough and extremely tiring. It really knocked them for six and both these staff are now suffering much more from the symptomatic effects of Covid.”

Ms Bedford called on social services for help but they were facing their own emergencies.

She said “We felt abandoned and alone.

“The shortage of carers on Anglesey is at dangerous levels and is being intensified by the pandemic.

“I contacted one reputable care sector recruitment agency and their reaction when I asked for temporary staff was ‘You must be joking’. They were overwhelmed by pleas from desperate care home owners.”

Ms Bedford has run the Caledonia since 1987, but she said it has been increasingly difficult to recruit staff over the last decade.

It normally has a core of between 13 and 15 staff, including a manager, two full time senior carers, a rota of approximately 11 part time care staff, two cooks and two cleaners.

But over the weekend, with so many of the team off ill or self-isolating, they had no night staff and only three day staff, no cleaners and only one cook. All the residents of Caledonia care home are double vaccinated, including the 11 of them who have tested positive.

The Caledonia is now in lockdown, unable to accept any more residents and is closed to visitors until 29 September.

Ms Bedford also runs another care home four miles away, the 15-bed Plas Dyffryn care home.

She said: “At one stage over the weekend the authorities advised us to transfer staff from there to Caledonia but that would put staff and residents at Plas Dyffryn at increased risk.

“It is also not feasible because we simply do not have enough care staff on our books to stretch that thinly, and the Caledonia is specialised for dementia care so staff here need to be trained in those highly specific skills.”

Mario Kreft, the chair of Care Forum Wales, said: “My heart goes out to Ann, the staff, the residents and their families for this terrible predicament which is not of their making.

“Quite simply, the Caledonia was placed in a totally impossible position, and it really should not have come to this.

“The situation in which the Caledonia finds itself is sadly far from unique. Care homes and domiciliary care companies are having an absolute nightmare in terms of staffing and it is only a matter of time before one or more of them has to close.”

The Welsh Government will be receiving hundreds of millions of pounds from the UK Government as a result of the announced increase in National Insurance. Mr Kreft said it is “imperative that money is used wisely to address the chronic underfunding that is the root cause of low pay in the sector”.