These are troubled and troubling times. Irrespective of the outcome of the Iran conflict, the UK is judged to be closer to involvement in a widespread war than at any time for 60 years. Never mind the threat of another pandemic or natural disaster triggered by climate change.
How well placed is social care to withstand the impact of major civil disruption? Memories of COVID-19 are still raw. Care services responded magnificently to that crisis, but at the cost of the lives of at least 1,000 heroic care workers. Never again, we vowed.
Such thoughts surely hung heavy on the minds of leaders of care associations from the UK and Ireland when they gathered recently in County Cork for a meeting of the Five Nations Care Forum (FNCF). Their timely topic: social care in an age of geopolitical instability.
As it happened, just days earlier the House of Lords had held a short debate on civil preparedness. Labour peer Lord (Toby) Harris, Chair of the independent National Preparedness Commission, warned that ‘the public remain blissfully unaware of the various threats and risks that the nation faces, let alone their urgency and scale’. Urging a national conversation on improving our readiness for emergencies, he added, ‘The whole of society needs to be engaged.’
Over in Cork, the FNCF drew up a communiqué calling on the governments of each of the five nations to ‘engage meaningfully’ with the social care sector on resilience preparation and to guarantee involvement of social care leaders in emergency planning structures.
Resilience planning needed to recognise all the vulnerabilities of care delivery, the communiqué said. These included workforce travel, access to fuel, medicines and food, continuity of utilities and communications, availability of PPE and community equipment and cyber security. Cross-system co-ordination that had been hastily put together during the pandemic needed to be rebuilt and, this time, sustained.
Dr Jane Townson OBE, Chief Executive Officer at the Homecare Association, and a participant at the forum meeting, said the Iran war is already having a marked effect – not just on fuel prices for homecare workers who travel an estimated (and staggering) 4.3 million miles every day, but on the cost of essential supplies such as vinyl gloves.
‘We must also recognise the human dimension and the wellbeing of the workforce,’ said Townson. ‘That means acknowledging both economic and personal pressures. Social care is sustained to a significant degree by workers from international communities who may have family ties to the Middle East and may be directly affected by the present conflict.’
One key issue that should concern all care leaders is the ever-growing dependency of services on guaranteed power supply. Digital care notes and rotas make it vital that workers have uninterrupted online access, yet in 2021, Wi-Fi went down within hours of Storm Arwen hitting parts of northern England where some localities were left without electricity for up to seven days.
Then there is the dark shadow of another pandemic. We await publication later this year of the report of the COVID-19 Inquiry’s Module 6, focused on social care, but we already have its Module 1 report on resilience and preparedness, and it makes sobering reading. As inquiry chair Baroness Hallett said, ‘It is not a question of “if” another pandemic will strike, but “when”.’
What steps has your organisation taken in anticipation of another pandemic? Visit the CMM website and comment on this column or join the conversation to share your thoughts.
David Brindle is a social care commentator and former Public Services Editor of The Guardian. Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: @David-Brindle