Marie Curie responds to Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s plan for social care

 

Today the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock MP, announced an action plan for social care during the Covid-19 crisis - including measures to contain the spread of the virus in social care settings, support the social care workforce and ensure good quality social care at the end of life.

In response, Marie Curie Chief Executive Matthew Reed said:

“Social care is essential to good end of life care - it is vital that, even as we fight this virus, dying people can continue to get the best dignified and humane social care they need.

“Measures to ensure that people will be able to safely visit dying loved ones are very welcome. It is a very human need to want to be with the people we love when they are dying. It’s in our nature to care for them, to comfort them, to hold them and to let them know they are loved.

“Nobody should die alone and wherever it is safe to do so, families must have the opportunity to say goodbye. We understand the power of those goodbyes and the comfort they bring people in their grief and the long term psychological damage and complicated bereavement of this not happening.

In our own hospices we have tried to make those visits happen wherever possible.

“However, families and staff can only do this when it is safe to do so. Care providers like Marie Curie struggle every day to get enough PPE to our frontline workers to keep patients and staff safe. The Government must ensure that hospices, care homes and other community settings are able to access the forthcoming new processes to get all the PPE they need or we will continue to hear the heart-breaking stories of people who didn’t get to say that final goodbye.

“Similarly, while the ambition to ensure every person working in social care who needs a test gets one is the right goal, the Government must ensure that this covers the whole community care sector. Many of the patients who we care for in their own homes are not getting tested and our own frontline staff would benefit from a wider, more inclusive testing programme. Patients being discharged to hospices or other community care settings, as well as the staff working in those settings and family carers, must be covered.

 “We also welcome the Health Secretary’s decision to reject blanket Do Not Resuscitate orders for any group. The decision not to resuscitate is a very personal and often deeply difficult choice for a dying person and their family. Any such decision must be made on an individual basis by dying people and their families in consultation with clinicians and through proper Advance Care Planning. Any one size fits all approach, even during these difficult times, would be wrong and the Health Secretary has made the right decision to reject it.

“Marie Curie cares for people coming to the end of their lives every day and we know just how important good social care is to dying people and their families. During this pandemic it is even more important  to ensure that the social care sector is supported so it can continue to look after people in their final days and protect the NHS by keeping people out of hospital and cared for in the community.”