Our look at the Government's new coronavirus adult social care strategy

Updated 20 April 2020

Last week, we wrote to Matt Hancock, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, calling for a dedicated national strategy to support the care system through the coronavirus pandemic. 

We are pleased to see the Government has taken action by announcing and publishing this strategy at their daily coronavirus briefing yesterday. 

What is included in the Government's plan?

It is promising to see that our calls to better protect care home residents and staff from the virus with Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and testing have been included. 

The Government has announced plans to implement strategies around PPE and coronavirus testing across the social care system. This will see more PPE made available to social care workers and testing given to social care staff, patients being discharged from hospitals into care homes, and all care home residents who are symptomatic.

However, we are disappointed to see some of our vital calls are missing from the strategy. 

What is missing from the Government's plan?

There is no reference to more frequent publishing of data on the number of Covid-19 related deaths in care homes, and while the Government have recognised the right for families to say goodbye to loved ones in care homes, they have not made any reference to increasing social contact for residents in other circumstances.

First, we will be acting fast to further address Government on our calls for more frequently published data on the numbers of people dying of Covid-19 in care homes. 

Up-to-date figures are vital if measures to prevent the impact of coronavirus on the social care system are to be effective. 

The latest figures on deaths with Covid-19 in care homes show 217 care home residents have tragically passed away with the condition. However, this data is already significantly out of date, only accounting for deaths up to the beginning of the month. This delay of data for a virus that is spreading rapidly is unacceptable and means steps cannot be taken to truly understand the impact and, ultimately, save more lives. 

As in the case of hospital deaths, Alzheimer’s Society is calling on Government to publish new data on care home deaths with Covid-19 daily. While we were pleased to see that this weekend they reduced the time lag on this data from 11 days to 5 days, it is still imperative that these figures reflect the current situation, and not that of almost a week ago.

We estimate that 70% of residents of care and nursing homes have some form of dementia, so we will not stop campaigning to prevent the potentially devastating impact the virus could have on the social care sector, and the people living with dementia who rely on it. 

Help us challenge Government

Write to your MP asking them to back our calls to the Department of Health and Social Care for daily publicised numbers of Covid-19 related deaths in the care system.

Without this data, we cannot begin to implement the necessary plans needed to stop the impact of the virus on the social care system.