I don’t do this very often but this is the newest Blog from the British Society of Gerontology. In the current situation this is what people working in older people’s care need to hear although its tough reading. When this is all over can we re-evaluate the value of very large care homes and look at other options for those needing 24/7 care. The “warehousing” model is broken and has been for a while.
Posted by Chris Phillipson, Manchester Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Ageing (MICRA)
Can society be trusted to run care homes? An age-old question but one which has come back with a vengeance with the emerging catastrophe caused by Covid-19. Of course, the signs have been there for some time, that disasters – such as those linked with climate change and pandemics – create havoc for institutions built to protect older people. In Europe, the impact of the 2003 heatwave is well-known – causing 35,000 excess deaths. France was especially affected with around 15,000 deaths – 1 in 5 occurring in residential and nursing homes. Despite claims that lessons were learnt from that disaster, the Covid-19 crisis is confirming once again the vulnerability of people living in residential and nursing home care.
Across Europe, thousands of people are dying in care homes: in Madrid, Spain, out of 3,000 deaths reported in…
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