Scottish care home inquiry: residents left to starve and treated like exhibits
Scotland's covid-19 care home public inquiry hears reports of care home residents physically restrained, left to starve and treated like "exhibits in a reptile house" due to ScotGov pandemic policies
The 1997 film ‘Wag the Dog’ satirically ridiculed the politics of power and attention. Robert De Niro’s character, a master of the dark arts of the spin doctor, decides the best way to save his client’s (the President) ailing re-election fortunes by diverting attention elsewhere. In pursuit of this he opts to invent a fake war in Albania so voting American’s fail to notice the President’s sex scandal in the oval office. While the film was clearly inspired by the travails of President Clinton, it nevertheless gives us a useful black comical insight into just how the politics of distraction work in western democratic politics.
It is with that in mind as I read through Scottish newspapers over the last few weeks. Column inches understandably filled with the First Minister’s bizarre 24 hour decision to announce a council tax freeze. No consultation with COSLA, civil servants or even apparently his own Scottish Government cabinet. The speculation across the pages and airtime as journalists, talking head and commentators fervently struggle to work out the strategy bubbles along.
Yet the reality is there was no grand strategy, it’s all about gaining control over the agenda. This is perhaps why I suspect Murray Foote likely had a heads-up before most that the council tax freeze announcement was coming. This has raw politics all over it. Two simple twin objectives: get the story away from election defeats, sliding opinion polls, myriad negative stories and instead onto ‘tax cuts!’. The calculation in Bute House is obvious: most voters won’t know nor care about COSLA, all they’ll hear is ‘tax freeze’. Will such cynicism work? Who knows, but I tend to find voters have a knack of seeing through game playing 7-dimensional chess.
With all this in mind, I want today to have you all focus on one such news story the Scottish Government is really hoping you won’t notice this week. It’s time to talk about the Scottish inquiry into the SNP’s preparedness and devolved response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Exhibits in a reptile house
The Scottish Covid Inquiry has finally begun, despite the somewhat chaotic early beginnings as judges resigned and fresh faces were rapidly recruited.
As the inquiry finally opens, already we are learning of reports where care home residents were physically restrained, prevented from approaching loved ones, denied access to family amid draconian pandemic lockdown policies.
Amber Galbraith KC, speaking on behalf of Care Home Relatives Scotland (CHRS), speaking in relation to one case told the inquiry, “A carer was able to sit beside her and hold her hand, but not her daughter. What is that, if not discrimination?”
Ms Galbraith painted a picture of comparing care home residents’ experience of restrictions to being “an exhibit”; paraded out to wave confused at families from behind glass.
She said: “Perhaps they would be paraded out behind glass like an exhibit at a reptile museum or a prisoner.”
Naturally care homes have a duty of care and procedures amid a health pandemic necessarily must be strict to protect the lives of the most vulnerable. That said, as someone whose mother ran a nursing home as a manager, I understand very well just how disproportionate the burden of regulations were on care homes.
But the job of care homes - to get the balance right between rings of protection of the elderly from a pandemic virus and the welfare that comes from access to family - was not aided it seems by the Scottish Government.
Many care home managers felt abandoned by GPs, and left to struggle as the Scottish Government did little to tackle companies charging astronomical prices for personal protective equipment (PPE).
Many question why carers had intimate access to residents which was denied to families. Perhaps some of the answer lays with the chronic stress placed on general managers of care homes from the shortages of PPE, resources and inconsistent ScotGov guidelines?
David Di Paola, a solicitor representing CrossReach, a social care organisation operated by the Church of Scotland, correctly paints a picture of just how unprepared the sector was for the pandemic. He informed the Inquiry in his opening statement of how the sector had been underfunded as a result of “years of underinvestment”.
“The organisation [CrossReach] also had issues with sourcing personal protective equipment (PPE) due to the unprecedented demand for it.
Mr Di Paola said some companies were charging seven times more than they generally would.”
Mr Paola also criticised the Scottish Government’s approach to the implementation of guidelines and rules. Informing the Inquiry that “sector representatives had to intervene to stop rules late on a Friday from coming into place by the following Monday.”
Nicola Sturgeon relentlessly criticised Boris Johnson during the pandemic period for his ad-hoc approach to guidelines and rules. It is beginning to seem as if Scotland under the SNP similarly lacked consistency. Holyrood it seems was following only a few steps behind BoJo, but able to hide similar incompetence beneath the the clownery of No.10.
Worse yet to come
The inquiry is expected to last upwards of two years, and this is merely the beginning. But already we can anticipate some that is yet to come.
Soon the inquiry will hear testimony, evidence and reports of instances where care home residents may have been “neglected and left to starve” during the pandemic.
According to lawyers representing bereaved relatives said they anticipate the inquiry will hear some people were forced into agreeing to “do not resuscitate” plans.
Shelagh McCall KC has already informed the inquiry of evidence which will “point to a systemic failure of the model of care”.
“As well as revealing the suffering of individuals and their families, we anticipate the evidence in these hearings will point to a systemic failure of the model for the delivery of care in Scotland, for its regulation and inspection.
"We anticipate the inquiry will hear that people were pressured to agree to do not resuscitate notices, that people were not resuscitated even though no such notice was in place, that residents may have been neglected and left to starve and that families are not sure they were told the truth about their relative's death.”
Ms McCall at the inquiry made clear bereaved families want to know why covid-19 spread “like wildfire” through nursing homes, despite draconian policies which left residents feeling like exhibits in a reptile house.
Perhaps part of the answer to this question is already known - at least in part - since the Scottish Government led by Nicola Sturgeon pushed patients out of hospitals into care homes without any Covid testing during the pandemic.
It should be noted that according to analysis published by Public Health Scotland, they uncovered no statistical evidence that discharges of hospital patients into care homes had caused outbreaks in care homes between March and May of 2020. However the revelation that patients - some with Covid - had indeed been pushed into care homes raises renewed questions. One study by Public Health Scotland, conducted during the pandemic proper, is not sufficient grounds to let the SNP government off the hook so easily.
Nicola Sturgeon insisted on denying it was unlawful to transfer covid infected patients into care homes untested. But to many bereaved relatives that argument fails to butter any parsnips.
The inquiry has only just begun, but expect much more to come. It seems inevitable to me that one of the things which the inquiry will expose how low a priority elderly care policy is in devolved Scotland. That - alongside much more besides - shall need to change.
The Scottish COVID-19 public inquiry continues
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Are you incapable of displaying any objectivity Dean? The discharge of patients to care homes became a problem for every government tackling the pandemic. In the defence of governmental decisions (North and south of the border), these decisions were taken on a case by case basis by clinicians not politicians. Boris clumsily blamed clinicians at time, he was of course right, but just shouldn't have admitted it. Many other western govns followed the same policy. Only in you warped imagination (Or in the daily express) can this be considered an existential crisis for the Scotgov.