New data from the Voluntary Organisations Disability Group (VODG), released April 2020, shows the government response to supporting adult social care through the pandemic needs to be more inclusive to enable the social care sector to support disabled people and their services.
The research, carried out in collaboration with Professor Chris Hatton from Lancaster University, included the following findings and recommendations
- Disabled people and the staff who support them are not being tested. Testing needs be significantly increased urgently across all settings.
- An improved approach to testing is required to protect people supported and the workforce.
- Personal protective equipment (PPE) is crucial to ensuring the safety of disabled people and the workforce supporting them in an appropriate and proportionate way.
- Deaths from COVID-19 among disabled working age adults are still more common than general population death rates for the same age group.