The National Care Forum (NCF) – the leading association for not-for-profit social care has made the following statement in response to the publication of the Covid Inquiry Module 2 report which covered political decision making during the pandemic.
Vic Rayner, CEO of NCF commented: “The publication of the Covid Inquiry’s Module 2 report into political decision making during the pandemic has found that the government did “too little, too late”. It has also uncovered that older people and disabled people, amongst other groups, were not adequately considered in pandemic planning or decision making. The evidence I gave as a core participant in module 6 of the Covid Inquiry hearing sasserted that ‘the UK government did in fact receive a huge amount of information and expertise that NCF and our members provided repeatedly directly from the frontline of delivery which highlighted in real time the risks facing social care and support services’.
“We were also clear in our evidence that ‘throughout the pandemic response there was a concerning lack of understanding of adult social care by policy makers leading to an unhelpfully narrow public policy and resource focus on care homes for older people, with little consideration of the breadth and diversity of care and support settings and services. As a direct consequence guidance and policy created during the pandemic were marked by a lack of understanding of the diversity of adult social care and support services and the people using those services’”.
Vic Rayner concluded: “The failure to listen to representatives of adult social care providers, or to involve adult social care provider experts in advisory bodies and key-decision making moments, had devastating consequences and we must never allow this to happen again.
‘Too little, too late’ represents lives that could have been saved if advice and expertise provided to government by those at the frontline of care and support delivery was listened, especially in the early days of 2020.
“While the report focuses on the core political and administrative decision making in the UK in response to Covid, it’s important to remember the amazing work of our not-for-profit members and their care and support workers. They provide an essential public service and enable people of all ages and all circumstances to live good lives, alongside the communities and people they love. The care they provide is the backbone of many communities, families and local economies as well as wider wellbeing and population health – we forget that at our peril.”
Image depicts the National Care Forum logo.