Human rights were disregarded during COVID, Core Participant highlights at social care module of Inquiry

Representing the Core Participant group of Care Rights UK, John’s Campaign and the Patients Association, the evidence session will spotlight how older and disabled people were failed by the very systems designed to protect their rights. Drawing on thousands of adviceline calls, the Core Participant will call for urgent reforms to provide accountability and protect dignity in social care.

Throughout the module, political leaders have leaned on the fragmented nature of the care system to explain their repeated failure to provide the same level of protection offered to NHS patients.

This failure had devastating consequences during the pandemic, as heard by all three Core Participant organisations, who represent families still living with the trauma of neglect, isolation, and loss.

The voices of older and disabled people were either not heard or not acted upon and organisations representing people in care were severely undervalued. The Core Participant will demonstrate how this failure to appreciate the realities for those drawing on care led to inadequate guidance with dire consequences on the ground.

Routine inspections were paused, removing vital impartial oversight; enforced supervised visits denied people privacy, making it harder to report abuse or neglect; and a 14-day isolation rule after hospital visits and other medical appointments discouraged people from seeking essential healthcare for fear of further isolation.

People’s rights became negotiable and sidelined during the pandemic. Laws that were meant to protect people, such as the Care Act 2014 and the Equality Act 2010 were eased or appeared to have been forgotten. The Core Participant will testify how care providers were led by non-statutory guidance and how legal duties were dismissed, leading to blanket policies and degrading treatment for people in care.

Government guidance failed to make reasonable adjustments for protected characteristics such as age and disability, with serious consequences for people drawing on care, seemingly based on harmful assumptions about their quality of life and needs.

The Inquiry is an essential moment for recognition of how the misunderstanding and undervaluing of social care led to fundamental disregard of human rights for older and disabled people. The Core Participant group will continue to advocate for people at the core of the care system, and urges the Government to act on the Inquiry’s recommendations to ensure they are never subjected to such avoidable harms again.

John’s Campaign, Care Rights UK and the Patients Association are represented in Module 6 by law firm Leigh Day. The team includes human rights partners Emma Jones and Tessa Gregory and solicitor Carolin Ott. Leigh Day has instructed Adam Straw KC of Doughty Street Chambers and Jessica Jones and Emma Foubister of Matrix Chambers.

Helen Wildbore said:

“As the mismanagement of the pandemic unfolded, our adviceline heard the distress, pain and trauma caused to people needing care. Their voices were lost, their needs were neglected, and their lives were treated as expendable. We will make sure their experiences are heard at the Inquiry and call for changes to tackle the government’s neglect of the social care sector, and to centre the rights of those within it. Whilst we cannot undo the pain caused, lessons must be learned to ensure the unnecessary loss and suffering never happens again.”

Carolin Ott said:

“This module of the Inquiry lays bare the devastating consequences of treating social care as secondary to the NHS and failing to consider the needs of the people social care is intended to serve. Legal duties designed to protect older and disabled people were disregarded, and were replaced by policies and guidance that too often ignored fundamental rights or failed to ensure respect for them. We hope the Inquiry recognises the urgent need to embed accountability into the care system, to ensure such injustice is never repeated.”