MENTAL HEALTH From All Sides
Liz Jones, Policy Director at the National Care Forum looks at the detrimental impact of the pandemic on social care workers’ mental health and suggests what should be done to alleviate the current care crisis.
Oſten, social care is unnoticed undervalued in society. Most members of the public do not realise the responsibility that care workers have and the difference they make to people’s lives every day.
THE ROLE OF THE PANDEMIC
The pandemic has had an impact on everyone, within and beyond social care, and altered how they work, in so many ways. Covid-19 has inevitably heightened the likelihood of mental health issues for social care professionals as well as the people they support
A key issue for care providers, especially at the start of the pandemic, was feeling that they have had to fight for testing and PPE essentials for the safety of their workforce and the people they support. The sense of not feeling supported by the system was very disheartening and frustrating.
“Care workers faced a real challenge at the start of the
pandemic, with a total lack of guidance and support for the social care sector.”
The reality of a pandemic is that people get ill. People who draw on care and support, people who provide care and support, their families, their colleagues. This puts huge pressure on those who remain in work – covering shiſts with reduced staff levels creates a relentless schedule of trying to cover more work than is possible. This was especially evident early on in the pandemic, when social care staff were catching Covid and there were similar workforce issues in the health sector. It became difficult to get support from health services and as a result, this meant that oſten care staff were being asked to take on more clinical tasks without the necessary support and recognition.
A further issue faced by social care workers was the attempt by other parts of the health system to impose blanket DNACPR (Do Not Attempt Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation) orders for people with Covid, especially older frailer people and people with a learning disability. Care workers found themselves championing the lives of the people in their care and challenging this blanket approach, which was entirely unacceptable, immoral and breached people’s human rights.
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Care workers faced a real challenge at the start of the pandemic, with a total lack of guidance and support for the social care sector, as all efforts focussed on protecting the NHS. The pendulum then swung the other way with an enormous amount of very last-minute guidance which changed frequently with little notice. The whole experience has been very frustrating and exhausting for people working in social care, battling to keep the people they support and their colleagues safe in a pandemic.
STAFF BURNOUT AND THE PROVISION OF CARE
These issues have detrimentally affected the quality of the care provided and the mental health of care workers. Staff members have felt exhausted and demoralised - they want to give the best care possible but during the pandemic, they have not had support from the system to do so and the workforce pressures have been enormous.
Alarmingly, some social care providers feel that it is impossible to meet future requests for decent quality care. They see the impacts on people stuck in hospitals who need care to help them get back home and the need for care for people in the community who desperately care and support, but without adequate staffing levels they are unable to supply the extra care needed.
MANDATORY VACCINATIONS FOR SOCIAL CARE
The introduction of the Vaccination as a Condition of Deployment (VCOD) policy and the design of the policy brought further pressure on the mental health of social care workers. Care providers have consistently supported the importance of vaccination, but mandation of the vaccine for a subset of care workers was hugely challenging. The issue of mandatory vaccination is polarising and divisive, creating difficulties within staff teams and across care provider organisations as well as presenting challenges for the relationship with the people they support and their families.
Staff members leſt or were dismissed as a result of the regulations mandating vaccination for care home staff - this broke up teams of staff with long-term colleague relationships and expertise and in some cases, residents lost relationships with long-time carers.
Public consultations showed a lack of public support for the VCOD policy. And yet it was only once the policy was going to be rolled out to the NHS that it was considered to be a non- starter. Previously, no thought had been given to the impact it had already had in care homes. The media highlighted the policy as causing an 80,000 NHS staff exodus and suddenly there was a rethink; there was a sense of inevitability that the policy was destined to never be enforced more widely. The lack of public and media attention on the care workers when
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