Covid in Scotland: Home carers 'angry' over routine testing delay
- Published
Staff who provide care for people in their own homes have told BBC Scotland they are angry they still do not have access to routine Covid testing.
The Scottish government announced last month that care-at-home workers would get regular tests but a timescale for the roll out has not been finalised.
The GMB Union said home carers wanted to "feel safe" as they did their jobs.
Health Secretary Jeane Freeman said she was working on how to implement a testing programme.
She said she hoped to take her plan to parliament for approval before the end of this month.
Staff working in care homes across Scotland are offered weekly Covid tests.
But some care-at-home workers - who go into houses to provide daily personal care and support to elderly, disabled and vulnerable people - have told BBC Scotland they feel forgotten about.
'We need to be the priority'
Kathy Paton is recovering after spending a week in hospital being treated for coronavirus
Kathy Paton, from Glasgow, has been a home carer for almost 20 years. She worked "on the frontline" during the first seven months of the pandemic but is now at home recovering after contracting coronavirus.
She did not catch the virus at work. She believes she caught it from her husband who also tested positive.
However, she said she was nervous about returning to her role as a carer having experienced first-hand the impact the virus can have.
"I had to be taken into hospital for a week and then put on oxygen. I was in a really bad way," she told BBC Scotland's The Nine programme.
Kathy said that while she was in hospital she heard that the Scottish government had announced routine testing for care workers like her.
However, she said she was "very, very angry" that this has not yet been implemented.
"Why are we not getting tested when we are working with vulnerable people?" she said.
Other home care workers have raised concerns about the fact they often visit several houses each day and, while they always wear PPE, they can be going between the homes of people who have tested positive for Covid and others who have not.
Kathy added: "I have always been a stickler for my PPE but now I will have to treat everyone as if they have got the virus as I wouldn't like to go through again what me and my husband are going through now.
"We need to be the priority - the staff that are actually going into people's houses."
Shona Thomson from the GMB said she wanted workers to feel safe doing their jobs
Shona Thomson from the GMB Union, which represents many home care workers, said: "Our workers out there are terrified. I've got workers on the phone every day.
"They are crying because they have vulnerable people in their own households who they are trying to protect and they are having to go out into the community as well to do their job.
"They want to continue doing their work but they want to feel safe doing it."
The GMB has called for the immediate rollout of routine testing and mandatory additional PPE for carers dealing with Covid positive patients.
The Scottish government announced on 23 October that regular testing of care-at-home workers would be introduced.
Jeane Freeman said she would bring her plan for regular testing for home carer workers to parliament in the next few weeks
Health Secretary Jeane Freeman said she was working on how regular asymptomatic testing for a number of groups would be implemented "in a phased way" and "what type of test makes most sense for us to use".
She said: "Before the end of November I will go back to parliament and set out for MSPs the whole delivery plan to roll out routine testing to asymptomatic people in those different groups.
"At the point when I set that out to parliament we will be giving dates for some of these groups - and that will include home care workers - about when we will begin to deliver that testing."
Responding to suggestions that some care workers feel "forgotten", the health secretary added: "I am genuinely very sorry that they feel like that. I have certainly not forgotten them.
"They have always been in my mind as a group that we needed to be able to offer testing to as soon as I had the capacity to do that."
