The Covid-19 inquiry has published its sixth report on adult social care, and bereaved families say it still falls short on care homes near me. Deborah Doyle said the report left her “quite underwhelmed” after the latest findings on how the pandemic hit care homes.
Hallett’s report says tens of thousands of people died in the care sector during Covid-19. It also says care staff were forced to wear bin bags because of a lack of protective clothing, while relatives were banned from seeing loved ones in their dying days.
Deborah Doyle and Sylvia Griffiths
Doyle linked the report to her own loss. Her mother, Sylvia Griffiths, died aged 76 in a Sunderland care home on 16 April 2020. Doyle said, “It’s everything that we knew already, it needs to go further. I felt quite underwhelmed.”
She added, “I feel like Matt Hancock and Boris Johnson have basically got away scot-free.” For families like hers, the report is not just a record of what went wrong; it is a test of whether anyone will be named as responsible for decisions that shaped care-home outcomes.
Jean Adamson and accountability
Jean Adamson said she felt “let down” by the report. Her father, Aldrick Adamson, died on 15 April 2020 aged 98 after contracting Covid in a care home, and she believes government policy to discharge untested hospital patients into care homes was to blame.
Adamson said, “It does not hold individuals accountable for the multiple failures in the way the pandemic was managed.” She also said, “And the recommendations need to be much more robust, we need to hold the government’s feet to the fire so we can prevent another national tragedy in future.”
What the report adds
The inquiry’s recommendations include more detailed pandemic planning for the care sector, a record of isolation facilities in care homes, and new guidance on visitor restrictions in these scenarios. In practical terms, that means future decisions would not be improvised site by site: care homes would have a recorded list of where isolation could happen, and visitor limits would have a clearer rulebook before the next emergency arrives.
Nicola Brook, who represents bereaved families, called the report a “superficial damp squib.” Families will now draw up a list of demands to strengthen the recommendations, with the focus on turning broad lessons into rules that would force clearer decisions before the next outbreak reaches care homes.
Covid inquiry costs
The inquiry has now published six reports since it began in spring 2022, and it is the most expensive public inquiry in history, costing more than £200m. The government has spent more than £122m on legal advice and dedicated staff to prepare evidence, a scale that leaves bereaved families expecting more than broad conclusions from a 300-page document and six-page appendix.
