West Cheshire applauds its committed social carers

The council and its local care providers are maximising efforts to ensure every resident who relies on social care services, continues to get the support they need throughout the pandemic.

There are 5,994 residents across the borough who rely on care and support every day and the council is preparing for the demand placed on these services to increase along with workforce absences as the pandemic progresses.

These critical services support the borough’s most vulnerable and ‘at risk’ residents to stay well, as independent as possible, and connected with families and communities and are also key to ensuring hospital beds are available in the coming weeks and months to treat those residents most acutely affected by COVID-19.

Council teams have moved to a 7-day working week in order to speed up discharges from hospital and have now helped an additional 33 elderly and vulnerable people who have recovered from illness over the last 3 weeks, to return home or to residential care.

An additional 42 care home beds have also been commissioned exclusively for hospital discharges and the council’s Reablement team (who provide short-term care at home, to aid recovery after discharge from hospital) is working together with the Hospital Rapid Response Service to increase support and care provided in people’s own homes.

To help bolster teams further, the council has also launched a recruitment drive to find an additional 200 temporary care and support workers across the sector.

As well as supporting internal services and staff, the council is also working daily to support its 200 care providers who provide services in care homes, nursing homes and in the community, to manage outbreaks and limit infections by providing emergency supplies of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to its 5,000 strong workforce.

Councillor Val Armstrong, Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care and Health for Cheshire West and Chester Council, said: “We are incredibly proud and grateful to our brilliant colleagues, many of whom are dealing with ‘business as usual’ as well as the challenges presented by the current crisis.

“They have been working tirelessly and around the clock to ensure that the people who rely on us most, continue to be supported - whilst juggling to support their own families!

“The scale of this pandemic has raised issues that we’ve never encountered before and challenges do still remain which we have been actively raising at the highest level including the need for testing of care staff which is now available for all registered care providers across the borough and will enable care staff self-isolating to return to work much sooner.

“The government has now published an action plan covering pressing issues and we will continue to work with them to do all we can to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all our carers and residents.

“When we #Clapforourcarers it is not just for the NHS; please also spare a thought for our entire social care workforce who are also making sacrifices to keep us all safe through these difficult times.”