How social care in Calderdale is stepping up again in the pandemic

In-house council officers and a range of health and community sector partners were speaking to councillors at a special Rapid Review session of how health and social care services are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, hosted by Calderdale Council’s Adults, Health and Social Care Scrutiny Board.

The council’s Director of Adults Services and Wellbeing, Iain Baines, said it was a national requirement to be ready for winter and a winter plan sat alongside the existing system planning.

Mr Baines said the council had already provided well over two million pieces of PPE during the pandemic.

In the early months PPE demands nationally and internationally meant supplies of PPE were hard to get hold of.

But the council had secured new supply chains and this would be continued with local production a major element.

“It is critical to us. We have used a lot of local buisnesses and we intend to keep on,” he said.

The council will also once again open a retreat – premises it used earlier in the pandemic to provide a place where COVID-19 patients discharged from hospital who could not immediately be taken back by their place of residency could stay until they could return.

This was an important way of protecting care homes – since March Calderdale had seen 19 outbreaks of COVID-19 in 15 of the borough’s care homes – and hospitals.

Including those residents who had died in hopsital, at that point in time 56 residents of care homes in Calderdale had died where COVID-19 had been a factor on the death certificate, said Mr Baines.

The council was helping 9,000 shielding residents, 1,500 of them through a shielding hub which would be stepped up again.

Partnership was crucial, staff engaging with providers to provide support and advice.

The ongoing need for staff to undertake health and social care in the pandemic would also provide employment opportunities for jobseekers with people-to-people skills, said Mr Baines.

And, understanding the effect on families’ well being, ways were being explored to allow relatives to visit their loved ones in care homes as safely as possible.

Demand for home care would increase and long term financial pressures that were there before COVID-19 remained, said Mr Baines.

Coun Colin Hutchinson (Lab, Skircoat) said having enough community nursing staff would be key.

Coun Steven Leigh (Con, Ryburn) said a future item the board needed to consider was dentistry, which Coun Coun Marilyn Greenwood (Lib Cem, Greetland and Stainland) had raised earlier in the meeting.

Coun Greenwood asked if Calderdale needed to lobby the Government for more money and the council’s Chief Executive, Robin Tuddenham, said the council would continue lobbying for the investment Calderdale needed in the health and social care systems as well as developing these services in the community outlined in pre-COVID planning.

“Whilst we are looking at issues around COVID and the pressures of winter, we are not losing the focus of bringing together better health and care in localities – we are not losing sight of the long term,” he said.

Director of Transformation and Partnerships at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust, Anna Basford, said in terms of staffing, out of hours services, PPE and equipment, action was being taken now to keep colleagues safe in hospital.