Socialist Party Wales Socialism In Wales
Carmarthenshire Unison has written to Health and Social Care Minister, Vaughn Gething, to express the concern of council workers who are being put in danger by the negligence of governments who failed to prepare for the Coronavirus crisis and are not taking the necessary measures to protect them now. Health workers and care workers in the front line in the fight against Covid-19 are increasingly angry about the failure to protect them, their families and other service users.
At the beginning of the month Carmarthenshire County Council Unison branch demanded to know of the Welsh government why PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) was not reaching care workers caring for patients likely to have the Coronavirus.
The branch considered that the reply of Vaughn Gething was insufficient. This is its reply:
Dear Mr. Gething,
Thank you for taking the time to respond to our branch email sent to the First Minister. We appreciate this must be an extremely difficult and busy time for you and the Welsh Government. However, we would hope you understand that our members who are domiciliary care and residential care workers are putting their and their family’s lives on the line to maintain vital services to vulnerable service users and unfortunately we do not consider that the Welsh Government is doing enough to keep them safe. We consider that your response appears to avoid some of the issues we raised and appears contradictory.
In your email, you quite rightly state that PPE is one element in your efforts to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus and that other parts of the strategy are self-isolation and social distancing. But domiciliary and residential workers cannot observe social distancing guidelines as they have to provide personal care and yet the guidelines from Public Health Wales ( seems to take its lead from Public Health England) state that full PPE should only be used where someone has COVID-19 or has the symptoms.
The consequence of our members and other staff not wearing PPE is that they in some cases likely to pass on the virus to vulnerable service users and vice versa as a significant section of the population who have COVID-19 are asymptomatic.
We understand as we stated previously in our email dated the 2nd April that the Directors of Social Care were so concerned about the lack of PPE that they wrote a joint letter to the WLGA.
We are also aware that the trade unions on the Joint Council for Wales Executive Committee raised concerns about the guidelines pertaining to the use of PPE in social care settings. Vulnerable service users are often socially isolated but they cannot observe social distancing when they need personal care. But surely the least they can expect is that the person(s) caring for them is going to give them COVID-19 but that is what the guidance will lead to. We know that the letter from the Directors stated, and we wholeheartedly agree with them on this, that the only practical solution is for all carers to be given full PPE to visit and care for all service users.
We consider that the guidelines for the use of PPE, in particular for social care staff are based on the fact that there has been a lack of PPE and that these guidelines are a form of rationing that is putting our members and other staff health at risk and in some cases their lives at risk. You mention that five million items of PPE have been distributed in the past few weeks. But when actual demand is considered (even when just following Public Health Wales guidelines) this is not nearly enough and at the time of writing local authorities do not even know when they will receive more and therefore will find it extremely difficult to plan its use.
Unfortunately, our branch has often had to criticise the Labour Welsh Government in the past for passing on Tory cuts to councils in Wales and for underfunding the NHS in Wales. We warned of the consequences of these cuts on services, our communities, and jobs. Unfortunately, instead of planning for the inevitable flu pandemic that was likely at some stage the NHS and councils have had their ability to combat COVID-19 seriously weakened. We know the previous Tory government was provided with a report by Imperial College epidemiologists four years ago telling them that the NHS would not have enough PPE and ventilators and that there would be many deaths in a future flu pandemic. This report never got to see the light of day. We know what the Tories really think about our health, our NHS and council services but shouldn’t we expect more from a party that all the main unions including Unison are affiliated to.
This an emergency situation that needs emergency measures. We need the Welsh Government to be clear and transparent about why there is a lack of PPE and action taken immediately to rectify the situation. It is simply not good enough that the Welsh Government seems to be tail ending the Tories when it comes to PPE. The guidelines of Public Health Wales in regard to PPE do not protect the workforce and we believe exposes them and service users to unnecessary risk.
