A Dundee University graduate, who cared for Fife-born Motor Neurone Disease campaigner Gordon Aikman for the last two years of his life, has told how she is “terrified” the coronavirus outbreak could lead to the collapse of small care at home companies.
Andrea Ramsey, 47, who runs her own small home care business in Edinburgh, told The Courier she is scared that if she or any of her 40 staff become infected with Covid-19 or have to ‘self-isolate’, there might be consequences for those they look after and contribute to increased pressures on the NHS.
With more than 800,000 people across the UK reliant on home visits, the social care system helps keep pressure off the NHS.
But she fears the system could go beyond breaking point if carers in the community can’t do their jobs and clients, who she and her colleagues try to keep out of hospital, have nowhere else to go.
“I just want people to recognise that what we are doing is saving people – especially now – from going into hospital,” said Andrea, who graduated with an MA in Arts and Social Sciences from Dundee University in 1995.
“What I’m scared of going forward is see if we go into a client’s home, and they are not well – sometimes they have to get hospitalised: are you telling me people are going to go into hospital now for a urine infection?
“Every bed is going to be really precious in the hospitals – who are they going to prioritise?”
Most of Andrea’s clients are elderly vulnerable people in their own home – some with dementia – who need washed, dressed, given medication, fed and put to bed.
But she also has many younger clients including three clients with MS, two with Huntingtons, and two with MND.
One such person she got to know well was Kirkcaldy-raised Gordon Aikman who was diagnosed with the degenerative and terminal neurological condition MND before dying a few years ago aged 31. He was 28 when Andrea started looking after him.
By the last months of the former gymnast’s life, Andrea and her team visited him six times a day. He used an electric wheelchair, and would drink through a straw.
Andrea, who is currently working more than 50 hours per week, said it’s “not a glamorous job” and not that well paid.
But her staff are “100% committed” and while praising Scottish Care and her local authority for their support, she says it’s time greater recognition was given by government to the role they and others play – just months after workers were being described as “low skilled” during the Brexit debate.
“If there’s one good thing to come of this it is highlighting how important home care workers are,” she said.
“I think we’ve often been ignored.
“I think now times are changing and I think people realise what an integral part we play.
“We are working our fingers to the bone. Just the enthusiasm from my staff is nothing short of amazing.
“But we’re scared, we’re petrified. I’m terrified about losing my business, I’m terrified for the staff, I’m terrified for the clients.”
