Two-year study by Nuffield Trust and LSE says successive governments failed to make social care a priority
Distress and heartbreak for millions could have been avoided if the government had not missed opportunities to prepare social care for a pandemic, according to a big investigation into how the first wave of Covid hit care homes.
A review of events in spring 2020, when almost 20,000 care home residents died with Covid in England and Wales, found it was the result of “letting one of our most important public services languish in constant crisis for years”.
The government excluded social care from pandemic-planning exercises such as Exercise Alice and after problems were identified by Exercise Cygnus, which did include the sector, action was not taken.
Social care leaders felt invisible at the start of the pandemic because there had been no dedicated director general for social care in government since 2016.
No adult social care representatives sat on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) and people leading the UK pandemic response lacked “deep understanding” of social care.
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