IMAGENS DE OVOODOCORVO
 |
Fury as Boris Johnson accuses care homes over
high Covid-19 death toll
Industry hits back at PM’s comments, describing them
as ‘huge slap in the face’ for sector
Peter
Walker, Kate Proctor and Rajeev Syal
Mon 6 Jul
2020 21.04 BSTLast modified on Tue 7 Jul 2020 08.51 BST
Care
leaders, unions and MPs have rounded on Boris Johnson after he accused care
homes of failing to follow proper procedures amid the coronavirus crisis,
saying the prime minister appeared to be shifting the blame for the high death
toll.
With nearly
20,000 care home residents confirmed to have died with Covid-19, and estimates
that the true toll is much greater, there has been widespread criticism about a
lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), testing and clear guidelines for
the sector. On Monday, the total UK coronavirus death toll rose to 44,236, up
16 on the day before.
The
Guardian has previously revealed how public health officials proposed a radical
lockdown of care homes at the height of the pandemic, but they were overruled
by the government. Agency staff were found to have spread the virus between
homes, but a health department plan, published in April, mentioned nothing
about restricting staff movements. Around 25,000 patients were discharged into
care homes without being tested for coronavirus, an official report said.
Speaking
during a visit to Goole in Yorkshire, Johnson said the pandemic had shown the
need to “make sure we look after people better who are in social care”.
t
He went on:
“We discovered too many care homes didn’t really follow the procedures in the
way that they could have but we’re learning lessons the whole time. Most
important is to fund them properly ... but we will also be looking at ways to
make sure the care sector long term is properly organised and supported.”
The
comments followed fears that ministers – mindful of a likely future inquiry
into how the UK came to have the highest coronavirus death toll in Europe, with
the proportion of care home deaths 13 times higher than in Germany – could be
seeking to lay some of the responsibility on outside bodies, including Public
Health England (PHE).
A No 10
spokesman insisted Johnson was not blaming care homes, saying they “have done a
brilliant job under very difficult circumstances”. He added: “The PM was
pointing out that nobody knew what the correct procedures were because the
extent of asymptomatic transmission was not known at the time.”
But Nadra
Ahmed, chair of the National Care Association, which represents smaller and
medium-sized care providers, said Johnson’s comments were “a huge slap in the
face for a sector that looks after a million vulnerable people, employs 1.6
million care workers and puts £45bn into the economy every year”.
She added:
“Despite the fact PPE was diverted, despite the fact we didn’t have testing in
our services, despite the fact they’ve not put any money into our sector, it
has worked its socks off, and it’s a huge disappointment to hear the leader of
our country say what he’d said.”
A spokesman
for the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services said Johnson was
correct to say the sector needed reform and more funding. But he added: “Social
care has been hit hard by Covid-19 and it feels unfair to blame care homes for
the initial response to the pandemic as they did not feel prioritised from the
outset.”
Caroline
Abrahams, charity director of Age UK, said: “It would be unfair for anyone to
suggest that care staff have been authors of their own misfortune: on the
contrary, in a neglected and cash-strapped system they have been magnificent
throughout the pandemic – arguably far better than we as a country deserved.”
Rehana
Azam, national officer for public services at the GMB union, which has many
members in the social care sector, said: “Johnson is complaining about the
arrangements that he and his government have established and failed to change.
There is no point the prime minister passing the buck on this one.”
The
criticism was echoed by opposition politicians, with Liz Kendall, Labour’s shadow
social care minister, saying: “Staff who have gone the extra mile to care for
elderly people, and experienced things the rest of us can only imagine, will be
appalled to hear the prime minister’s comments. Boris Johnson should be taking
responsibility for his actions and fixing the crisis in social care, not
blaming care homes for this government’s mistakes.”
Ed Davey,
the Lib Dems’ interim leader, said Johnson was “trying to shift the blame to
those who risked their lives caring for our loved ones”.
Nick
Forbes, leader of Newcastle city council, said that at the start of the crisis
the local authority had 147 requests for emergency PPE from care homes because
they only had enough stock to last 24 hours. He said: “The prime minister is
either woefully uninformed or wilfully misleading with those comments and it
will anger people right across the sector.”
While the
government said it had “thrown a protective ring around care homes”, studies
and reports from the sector have painted a different picture.
One PHE
study found that temporary care workers transmitted Covid-19 between care homes
as cases surged.
During flu
pandemic planning in 2018, a report from social care directors warned ministers
that frontline care workers would need advice on “controlling cross-infection”.
But the health department’s social care plan, published on 16 April, mentions
nothing about restricting staff movements between homes.
The
Guardian also learned that while public health officials proposed an 11-point
plan to protect care homes in April, including a radical lockdown, with staff
moving in for four weeks while temporary NHS Nightingale hospitals were
deployed, it was rejected by the government.
The care
sector has also complained about a lack of protective equipment for staff, with
providers in some cases having to secure their own supplies. Earlier in the
outbreak, care home operators accused the government of “a complete system
failure” over testing for Covid-19.
Care home
managers said lives have been put at risk and conditions for dementia sufferers
have worsened because of the government’s failure so far to test hundreds of
thousands of staff and residents.
Boris Johnson's blundering was political genius.
But now that moment has passed
Stephen
Reicher
In the age of coronavirus people want competent
leadership, not anti-politics buffoonery
‘In this
crisis, our blundering prime minister is no longer of the group, nor for the
group, and certainly not achieving what the group needs.’
Published
onMon 6 Jul 2020 17.15 BST
In the
midst of the greatest crisis most of us have known in our lifetimes, we are in
more need than ever of effective leadership: to bring us together, to resolve
uncertainty and to help guide us out of this pandemic. So how have our leaders
– the prime minister in particular – measured up?
By most
criteria, not very well. The UK has one of the highest death rates in the world,
and as the carnage has increased so Boris Johnson’s standing has decreased. His
approval ratings fell from a hefty +40% in April to minus figures in June. The
percentage of people who felt his government had done a good job fell even more
sharply, from +51% to -15% between March and the end of May.
Yet Johnson
was supposedly the populist with the golden touch. After an unlikely victory in
the 2016 Brexit referendum and winning an 80-seat majority in the 2019 general
election, even those who saw him as a political clown had to admit he was
highly effective in winning public support: the New York Times referred to his
“blundering brilliance”. So how can we explain all this?
One of the
most potent and enduring myths in our society is that leadership is reducible
to the power of the leader. A few special individuals are blessed with special
qualities that set them apart from the rest of us and entitle them to rule. As
Thomas Carlyle asserted, “Universal history … is at bottom the history of the
great men who have worked here.” If only we could isolate the qualities that
make these leaders exceptional.
Such ideas
launched numerous studies that sought to find personality characteristics that
predict leadership success – none of them particularly fruitful. For such an
approach misses a very obvious point: leaders only achieve anything through
their followers, and “great man” theories write the followers out of history.
And leaders
are never just leaders, they are always leaders of a particular social group –
a nation, a political party, a religion. The same is true of followers. Those
on the inside often cannot understand why outsiders don’t revere their leader.
Those on the outside are equally uncomprehending of how anyone could. Think
Thatcher. Think Corbyn. Think Johnson. So, leadership is a group process: and,
more specifically, it is the cultivation of a “we” relationship between leaders
and followers.
Effective
leadership, then, is not about what separates the leader from others. It is
about what brings the leader together with group members and allows him or her
to represent them. An effective leader is one who is seen to be one of us, to
work for us and to achieve the things we value. That isn’t about being ordinary
or typical. It is about being prototypical – of representing the values and the
qualities that make our group distinctive.
In
addition, effective leaders are not passive. They actively craft the group
narrative and their own personal narrative to make the two mesh: they are skilled
entrepreneurs of identity.
Hence, no
given set of qualities will guarantee effective leadership, for these will
change according to the identity of the group.
Johnson’s
rise was as a populist, harnessing the resentment of those who were
experiencing a sense of decline, of being voiceless and of being ignored. He
successfully created a divisive narrative whereby “the people” were abandoned
and betrayed by “the liberal elite”. He was equally effective in creating a
narrative of himself as part of the people and not of the elite, so he could
help the former “take back control”.
Some might
object that the notion of a Bullingdon Club Etonian as “anti-elite” is
ridiculous (I would agree). But the populist’s “people” are not defined in
class terms. It is more about nation and culture and, above all, style. The
elite are those who ignore “us” and sneer at “us”. Johnson characterised them
as the “political class” and Brussels.
His
brilliance lay in his performance as the non-political politician. Not well
prepared, but chaotic. Not carefully controlled, but outrageous. Not dignified,
but happy to appear a buffoon. Even the look – rumpled suit, tousled hair – and
the name, Boris, foreswore the traditional politician’s dignity. Everything his
political critics saw as gaffes and weaknesses actually served to affirm his
anti-political identity, and their outrage marginalised themselves rather than
Johnson.
None of
this was accidental. Johnson’s apparently dishevelled, disorganised, improvised
buffoonery was in fact very carefully rehearsed. His brilliance did not come
despite his blundering. His blundering was his brilliance.
But the
performative politics of populism can backfire by making one unrepresentative
as the groupings change. In the midst of a pandemic where the widest possible
compliance to restrictive measures is necessary, the nation and its communities
must be unified and inclusive. The inherently divisive categories of populism
are no longer tenable.
Moreover,
we need competent governance to get us through, rather than insurgent
incompetence to get our votes. In this global crisis, our blundering prime
minister is no longer of the group, nor for the group, and certainly not
achieving what the group needs. The “Boris” shtick simply doesn’t wash with the
new “us”.
Of course,
the world may well change again, and Johnson may regain his effectiveness. But
perhaps his greatest achievement will be to help debunk the “great man” view of
history. For if Johnson demonstrates anything, it is that quality and qualities
alone do not make the leader. Rather, it is the fit between those qualities and
the nature of the groups they lead.
• Stephen
Reicher is professor of psychology at the University of St Andrews, and
co-author of The New Psychology of Leadership
.jpg)
.jpg)
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário