I urge Wiltshire Council to speak up for our wonderful carers and to press the Prime Minister and Health Secretary to make their protection against Covid a priority. We are blessed in Wiltshire with an army of unpaid and selfless carers. They look after their loved ones at little or no cost to Wiltshire Council. Too often that devotion and hard work is taken for granted.
This awful pandemic has hit people hard. Many carers looking after disabled and elderly family members have found themselves virtually trapped in their homes. They fear that venturing outside would expose their vulnerable, loved ones to the virus. At the same time the virus has robbed them of much needed opportunities for the respite breaks they need and deserve.
I was shocked to read a recent survey by Carers UK. That found 64% of carers had been unable to take any breaks at all in the past six months. A staggering 81% have seen an increase in their already long hours of care. Almost two thirds report their own mental health had worsened during this pandemic.
Yet unlike NHS staff and social care workers, our wonderful, unpaid carers do not feature on the priority list for vaccinations produced by the Joint Committee for Vaccination and Immunisation. This is grossly unfair. It means they will not get access to the first wave of Pfizer/BioNTech inoculations and may have to wait four months or more to get the protection they need for themselves to protect their vulnerable loved ones.
So I applaud and support the action taken by Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey MP to challenge this decision. As a teenager, Ed looked after his terminally ill mother ,so he knows the reality of the carers life. He has written to Health Secretary Matt Hancock urging him not to leave unpaid carers as the “forgotten and ignored” while others receive priority jabs.
We all want to see fast, safe action to vaccinate our care home residents. It is also right that NHS staff and residents aged over-80 should be next in the queue. But our unpaid, dedicated carers must feature in this priority list.