COVID-19 brought 'massive' rise in demand for home care visits, MPs told

Home care worker Jo Da Silva has told MPs the demand for home care visits went up during the pandemic with staff taking on extra duties but “anxiety” over falling sick and a lack of testing still remains.

Jo Da Silva, who works for home care agency Agincare, was speaking to the Health and Social Care Committee during an evidence session on staff burnout and resilience in the NHS and social care.

Speaking this morning (20 October), her evidence began with an apology saying “Sorry, I’m just a little bit teary”.

She told MPs her job had “changed dramatically” when COVID-19 arrived in the UK, with extra visits happening due to health issues amongst home care clients and “extra duties” undertaken by staff because clients’ family members were shielding.

“We’ve seen a massive increase in visits taking place for various reasons," Ms Da Silva said.

"Service users are allocated a certain amount of time but we found ourselves staying there for much longer periods of time and taking on extra duties”, such as extra shopping and medication duties.

Labour MP for Worsley & Eccles South, Barbara Keeley asked the home care worker whether the role of home care should be “expanded” because the people in home care can cope. Ms Da Silva told her home care’s role should be expanded because “we have taken on additional duties” and “we have been able to manage them as an agency”.

Home care workers' exclusion from COVID testing creating ‘anxiety’

But Ms Da Silva said people reliant on care were “worried” that home care staff would stop visiting them during the pandemic and said “there was a lot of reassurance needed. There still is.”

Home care workers and those they care for are currently excluded from asymptomatic testing. As home care workers are not being tested on a regular basis, Ms Da Silva urged MPs to make sure the home care sector gets the access they need to routine testing because a lack of tests was causing “a lot of anxiety amongst home care workers.”

“We’re always looking out for symptoms. Sometimes even the sight of symptoms then the anxiety sets in. Our immediate thought as care workers is we would like to get tested, not only for ourselves and our own family but to protect our service users.”

Antonia Hopkins, chair of the Board of Trustees at home care provider Guild Care, recently wrote to MPs about the government’s decision to get staff and residents in care homes regularly tested but not home care workers.

Ms Hopkins’ letter stated: 'We believe this should be extended to employees across all of our social care support services, such as home care and day centres for adults with learning disabilities.'

'Morale boost' brought people together

When it comes to helping home care clients, Ms Da Silva said supermarkets’ allocated key worker shopping hours “did not work” for home care workers who were busy with clients in the mornings.

As a result, many ended up working outside of their working hours to get clients' food shopping because they were shielding or they had no family members.

The home care worker also said demand for home care had increased as it had been “difficult to get in contact with GPs and district nurses. We were asked to do certain tasks that required a district nurse”.

She also told MPs funding for social care was “a big issue” and said “yes, it would be nice to get a little pay rise. We’ve done things that I think are on par with other medical professionals really, if I’m honest” and added: “I think the main thing is to be recognised”.

Asked to define ‘burnout’ by Jeremy Hunt, the chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, Michael West, senior visiting fellow at the think tank The Kings Fund replied “stress and burnout are when the demands on us exceeds the resources we have”.

Michael West referred to insufficient resources including lack of skills, training, guidance, equipment, PPE, funding or shortages in staff. He said burnout could result in people feeling a sense of emotional exhaustion. “Depersonalisation” could also result - with people having cynicism and detachment and the feeling they are not making a difference.

Referring to her employer, Ms Da Silva told MPs: “We’ve had really good support from Agincare as a whole throughout it and that continues. We’ve been very lucky.” She described receiving emails, video links, mental health support and phone calls from the home care agency during the pandemic.

She warned that people doing her job should not be “just perceived as care workers” doing personal care. The pandemic she said had “certainly opened” the public’s eyes “to what we actually do. It’s not just personal care that we do. A lot of our service users have relied on us really to take the role of some of their family members”.

Ms Da Silva also spoke of a “morale boost” among home care workers, with COVID-19 actually “bringing people together”.

“I love this job, I’m happy in what I do” and told MPs “there’s a whole lot of positives to this job… and that needs to be highlighted”.

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