IN-DEPTH: True Impact of Pandemic Policies Masked by Families Caring for Loved Ones

A senior citizen in his chair at The Fed care home in Prestbury, England, on April 23, 2021. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

The number of families taking care of disabled and elderly relatives surged by millions following the COVID-19 pandemic, potentially masking the impact of lockdowns and vaccination policies on caregiving responsibilities.

Decades of underfunding and lack of investment in residential and nursing care, combined with the post-pandemic staffing and a vaccine mandate have led to a chronic lack of capacity within the sector.

Around 9.1 million people provided care support to family and friends in 2019, but this figure grew by an estimated 4.5 million during COVID-19.

According to the charity Carers UK,  an estimated 13.6 million people could be propping up the health and social care system, saving the taxpayer over £162 billion a year, according to 2021 estimates. This is just short of the entire annual 2021 NHS budget of £164 billion.

Though the number of families providing “unpaid care” could be bigger, there isn’t a register that collates all the numbers.

The government defines “unpaid care” as “a private arrangement whereby someone cares for a family member, friend, or neighbour because of long-term physical or mental ill health or disability, or care needs relating to old age.”

“Four point five million joined many, many of those are still caring for loved ones, the reasons being there isn’t enough capacity due to staffing shortages in both care homes and in domiciliary care,” Chair of the Social Care Working Group at the Together Declaration Amanda Hunter told The Epoch Times.

She said that there was “no doubt the imposition of draconian visiting restrictions during the pandemic also led many to give up work to avoid placing loved ones in residential care.”

COVID-19 Policy Decisions

British care homes are currently facing a staffing crisis as thousands of care workers fired for refusing to take the jab are choosing not to return to work.

COVID-19 vaccinations were made compulsory for all staff working in care homes in England from Nov. 11, 2021, until the law was scrapped on March 15, 2022.

At the time it was warned such a policy for care workers would cause unknown staff shortages. However, the government said that there were to be “unquantified benefits” from the mandate, which it believed were “fairly substantial and long-lasting.”

However, a recent study found that the COVID-19 vaccine mandate in English care homes led to fewer staff but may not have reduced resident deaths.

Owing to a staffing crisis in care homes, many are now unable to find adequate care support for their loved ones, with working families forced to either reduce their working hours or even give up work altogether to provide essential care.

The Together Declaration, co-founded by Alan Miller, has an ongoing campaign to get the government to apologise, reinstate, and compensate fired care workers. He called their firing, “a huge loss and a shameful moment for Britain.”

Miss Hunter is also the founder of the campaign group Unlock Care Homes, which wants to put an end to “inhumane visiting restrictions, neglect, and abuse” in all care settings.

‘The Situation Is Unsustainable’

Miss Hunter, who experienced and “felt an utter sense of powerless and despair” witnessing her own mother suffer owing to the deprivation of family contact during COVID-19, said that families have struggled to find suitable care placements or to secure adequate domiciliary care packages.

“Forced to give up work, many are having to survive on Universal Credit or other means-tested benefits. The only alternative is to claim Carer’s Allowance, the lowest paid benefit in the UK,” she said.

She added that there is confusion over the division of responsibility for meeting care needs, and that leads to barriers and delays in accessing support, as NHS and Social Care squabble over which is responsible for funding.

At one point, after 14 months of being the main full-time carer 24/7 for her own mother leaving her at “breaking point,” she had to threaten to withdraw her care as this was the only way to force the system to provide a second carer, even though she knew she wouldn’t follow through with her threat.

“The situation is unsustainable, not only for those providing and drawing on unpaid care support, but for the economic viability of our social care services,” she said.

She warned that society may not be able to meet current demand, far less future demand, “if vast swathes of the adult population continue to be forced out of the labour market and onto state benefits in order to meet the care needs of our ageing and disabled populations.”

Miss Hunter called for the need for communities to “explore new models of care support to facilitate this.”

“The assessment of carers’ support needs, currently administered by local authorities, must also be reformed to ensure unpaid carers have access to the practical support required. As it stands, many wait for months before being assessed, while others are unaware of the support available–albeit minimal–and are left to struggle unaided for months, years on end,” she said.

A care home resident holding hands with her daughter on Oct. 29, 2021. Andrew Matthews/PA

Michael O' Brien, who looks after his parents in Barry, Wales, said that since COVID-19, there are more people that have taken on the responsibility of caring for loved ones as services were stopped during lockdown.

Mr. O' Brien, in his 50s, has been looking after both his parents, both in their 70s, for 15 years. His mother has fibromyalgia and father suffers from sciatica, conditions that can both be very painful.

“During lockdown there was basically no support out there. During the entire period of the pandemic, we got one phone call from a social worker, who basically just check out we were on dialysis for about a couple minutes. And then that was it,” he said.

Mr. O' Brien, who had to leave a career in information technology, said that authorities did an assessment on his mother and claimed she didn’t need any extra support, despite her being bed bound.

“There just needs to be a big recruitment driving in the social care sector,” he said, adding that authorities need to recognise how much people like him save the economy a year by looking after people at home.

‘It’s Really Shaken Me’

Ali Haggett told The Epoch Times the problem is that “authorities are pushing to get people out of hospital because of a bed crisis.”

She said that families are often then told a homecare domiciliary package care will arrive, but it often does not.

Mrs. Haggett’s father is 90 years old and lives alone in Cornwall, miles from her in Devon. She said that the system “let her down completely” when he came out of hospital two months ago.

She had on a two-hour trip two days a week to see him at one point.

“What I’ve seen in the care sector has been so terrible. On a psychological level. It’s really shaken me to be honest,” she said.

“They will then say when your dad’s independent enough, we'll help you find some other carers and then they don’t,” she added.

Mrs. Haggett said she knew how the care sector was as her mother went through it for two years in 2016 before died in 2018.

“So I had two years a bit then I thought it was terrible then I hadn’t these issues, but I mean, compared to now, it was brilliant. It’s so much worse now really,” she said.

She added that the “vaccine mandate was just the worst thing they could have done” because the care sector was struggling already.

She said that there are no care agencies in Cornwall where her father is as there’s no capacity.

“I was speaking to somebody at Adult Social Care the other day and they told me it was about as bad as it gets there compared to all over the country because of a lack of housing, finding homes for carers, and of course, there’s a lot of older people down there,” she said.

“He needs really someone coming in the mornings or for half an hour in the evening to make sure he’s safety dressed,” she said.

“But they send him home with what they call it reenablement package, a way of getting people out of hospital. And then they just cut us adrift with that,” she added.

Mrs. Haggett said that she had to employ a 24-hour care company at a cost of £1,200 a week for a month.

But she stressed that with or without money, there “just isn’t the staff.”

She said that her experience of her father “being signed off care has made her feel she has lost words myself sometimes because it’s so brutal and so cruel.”

“They are literally abandoning people. I don’t know how they do it,” she said.

The Department of Health and Social Care did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.