Furious care home bosses have accused “cowardly” Boris Johnson of “rewriting history” after he blamed them for coronavirus deaths.
The Prime Minister yesterday sparked a blame game after claiming too many facilities had ignore procedures.
Speaking on a visit to Goole in Yorkshire yesterday, the PM insisted the Government was “learning lessons the whole time”.
But pointing the finger of blame at individual care homes, he said: “We discovered too many care homes didn’t really follow the procedures in the way that they could have.”
Care bosses have now hit back at the PM amid the crisis killing nearly 30,000 elderly Britons.
Mark Adams, chief executive of social care charity Community Integrated Care told Radio 4 he “couldn’t say on national radio” his true feelings about the comments.
He said: “To be honest with you, if this is genuinely his view, I think we’re almost entering a Kafkaesque alternative reality, where the Government sets the rules, we follow them, they don’t like the results, they then deny setting the rules and blame the people that were trying to do their best.
“You’ve got 1.6 million social care workers who when most of us are locked away in our bunkers waiting out covid and really trying to protect our family, we’ve got this brave people on minimum wage, often with no sickness cover at all, going into work to protect our parents our grandparents, our children, putting their own health and potentially lives at risk.
“To get perhaps the most senior man in the country turning around and blaming them on what has been an absolute travesty of leadership from the Government I just think it’s appalling.”
Mr Adams demanded the PM take responsibility, and accused him of rewriting history.
He said: “What we are getting is history rewritten in front of us when you could list pages and pages of government failure when the system has had to cope with.
“To get a throwaway comment almost glibly blaming the social care system and not holding your hands up for starting too late, doing the wrong things, making mistake after mistake is frankly unacceptable.”
He also pointed to the shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) for staff in many homes, which failed to combat the spread of the virus.
The National Care Forum (NCF) hit back by telling the PM to start “turning the dial up on reform and down on blame”.
Care homes have had to contend with difficult rules while trying to look after vulnerable people – including confining patients to their room if they show signs of the virus.
It took the Government weeks to roll out wide-scale testing in care homes and for care staff – who could pass it on to residents.
According to the ONS, one in five people in care homes in England became infected with coronavirus – and more than half of all homes had outbreaks.
Care home residents over 65 and those with dementia are now able to receive a coronavirus test every 28 days and staff are able to access them every week, the Department of Health announced last week.
