Currently, in the context of the ongoing affects that Covid-19 is having on our lives, there has appeared another inexplicable anomaly in the advice and policy concerning carers and vaccinations.
Currently, it is expected that any carer working in a care home, rightly, must be vaccinated, this is for the protection of everyone inside the home and their visiting families. However, within the same rules, care workers are also legally free to work unvaccinated outside of a care home, where carers can be moving between up to 8 different client’s homes in a day. To anyone with any common sense this scenario is far more dangerous than a person who is based in the same place every day.
This oversight in policy fits with the lack of understanding that this government has demonstrated time and again about how the care sector functions. Care-Homes are of course a long-established staple of the care industry but using only one form of care as the ruling standard for all others is a huge lapse in constructive guidance and leaves many elderly people, who need access to safe care services, and those who work in the industry, incredibly vulnerable.
Overlooking live-in, hourly, and other forms of care in the home in this way highlights both a profound misunderstanding of the care system by the Government, as well as their underestimation of the vital work done by the care staff.
There seems to be an assumption among policy makers that people with a career in the community, or under the umbrella of outreach care work are operating in an unskilled role and thus should not be afforded the same protections as their care home counterparts.
Enough is enough, it is so important that the rules imposed on the Care Industry are done so with an understanding of the whole industry, not a rough idea of parts of it, and I invite anybody who truly believes the live-in carers the Government has ignored, are unskilled, irrelevant parts of the care industry, to spend a day with me and witness exactly how much skill these Cinderella’s of the care sector provide, day in day out, to their vulnerable client base.
Thank you for reading our blog ‘How is Parkinson’s diagnosed’. If you have or you know someone with Parkinson’s disease, call up our care team in Surrey today to see how we can help.
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