The chairwoman of the National Care Association has warned of the pressure care home staff are under as England eases its restrictions.
Nadra Ahmed spoke about the challenges facing the care sector amid the easing of coronavirus measures in England.
Spaking to Sky News she said: "It’s the management of all of this that’s going to be a challenge because recruitment of staff is an enormous challenge for us at the moment, and we’ve also got the pings going off for isolation, so I’ve got real staffing issues about how we manage this."
READ MORE:
She also said the government needs to clarify issues around visitors wearing masks to care homes and whether they can refuse.
“On the one hand we’ve been told mask-wearing will become optional, for people to make up their own minds,” she said.
“So, if we’ve got people who are coming in to take their loved ones out, we need to make sure that we understand what the rules will be for them.
“If they’re taking them to a local pub or local cafe, how do we work with that and how do we actually monitor that, because all the responsibility in any guidance that has come through rests completely on the provider.”
She highlighted the importance of keeping residents and staff at care homes safe from the spread of covid-19.
“We are going to have to manage the number of people coming into a care home, we’re not going to be able to enable three or four different lots of visitors in because we’ve still got to do all that clinical cleaning… We’ve got to do the testing, we’ve got to sort all of that out, and we haven’t got the staff.”
MPs have approved compulsory vaccinations for all care home staff in England.
Almost 30,000 or more care home residents died during the coronavirus outbreak in England and Wales in 2020 compared to the same period in 2019.
Ms Ahmed added that the sector expects to lose staff once mandatory vaccination comes in.
To get the latest email updates from the Manchester Evening News, click here.
