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Covid-19: Social Care Services

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, for this essential debate. This pandemic has become a palliative care emergency. I declare my role as vice-president of Hospice UK and Marie Curie. Care sector staff are providing extensive end-of-life care. They are skilled, compassionate and motivated, but low paid and, until now, unnoticed and unappreciated in society. Yet the mark of a civilised society is the way it cares for its vulnerable. The care sector is a bedrock of such a society.

Some of the most vulnerable can be difficult to care for. The Mental Capacity Act framework supports delivery of essential care and treatment, but safeguarding is harder. Covid guidance on the deprivation of liberty safeguards, DoLS, needs to cover greater responsibility for care staff while reducing bureaucracy.

Chairing the National Mental Capacity Forum, an interest that I declare, I see the care sector adapt with enthusiasm and profound caring to the challenges. Yet the care home staff feel abandoned. Personal protective equipment and weekly testing for all care home staff and residents are critical in controlling cross-infection. When will this happen? Staff from minority populations seem at higher risk of serious or fatal Covid-19. They are not deserting—far from it—but showing humanity and compassion in care. As a nurse said:

“I’m like a policeman who is facing a terrorist attack … ready to face it, but what will happen to our family? … That’s the only worry I have.”

Who is responsible for staff death-in-service financial support?

Dying residents need medication for symptom control. For care homes, without easy and rapid access to medicines, why has the repurposing of medicines not yet been approved? I tabled Questions on it on 7 April. Draft guidance was produced on 14 April and issued in Northern Ireland on 20 April. Why not England and Wales? Has every clinical commissioning group been instructed to achieve integration with its social care providers in the long term? Is it time to develop nursing home medicine to support social care delivery as a distinct discipline, and to fully integrate health and social care? It should have happened a long time ago; it must happen now.

2.10 pm