Covid-19 resulted in perfect storm for care sector, probe told

EDINBURGH: The social care sector was under-prepared for the Covid-19 pandemic as it was “already in crisis”, an inquiry has heard.

Rozanne Foyer, general secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC), told the Scottish Covid-19 Inquiry that funding cuts and changes to migration rules had left the care sector under-staffed and under-resourced going into the pandemic, resulting in a “perfect storm” when it hit.

She said that as a result the care sector went into the pandemic without a plan for dealing with it and with insufficient stockpiles of PPE, something that she said amounted to a failure by government to protect frontline staff. Ms Foyer also described a “burnout pandemic” that saw many staff leave the care profession after being left feeling “abandoned” while trying to care for vulnerable people in very difficult circumstances.

She told the inquiry: “Too many workers across our health and social care sectors were placed at really high levels of risk and it needs to be understood and investigated by this inquiry that a lot of those risks could have been avoided if proper planning, PPE and guidance had been in place.

“As far as we’re concerned our Governments both at UK and Scotland level really failed on that particular point, and that had a devasting impact on the outcome.”She pointed to research showing that that health and social care workers were four times more likely to contract the virus than the average worker, and that they were on average more likely to die of the illness.

“These workers placed themselves in some cases in lethal danger in service to their communities. “We feel that action needs to be taken now to make sure that those that are facing long Covid and those that have passed away as a result of their exposure to Covid are receiving meaningful state support.”Stuart Gale KC, co-lead counsel to the inquiry, asked her about part of her written statement concerning the impact of austerity on the preparedness of the sector.”