Mencap’s Executive Director of Strategy and Influencing, Jackie O’Sullivan, shared with the inquiry “On the 24th of March, some of our services alerted us to the fact that they were receiving letters dated the 24th of March that essentially said that if anyone in your service gets COVID, they’re unlikely to be treated and therefore please don’t bring them to hospital.”
This decision was made by National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) using a clinical assessment meant to assess physical frailty. The frailty assessment included anybody who needed support with a variety of tasks, such as shopping. Resultantly, many of the 1.5 million people in the UK that have a learning disability were ineligible for hospital treatment for COVID.
Although the guidance was removed within a month of its publication, the damage was already done and health professionals were operating on it's recommendations. Dr Paul Chrisp, who was the Director for Centre of Guidelines at NICE at the time, revealed to the inquiry that no disability organisations or charities were consulted on the guidance ahead of its release.
A Public Health England report in the early pandemic showed that adults with learning disabilities were over-represented by at least 3.1 times among those dying in the pandemic. It is unclear how many of those deaths could have been avoided with greater access to treatment and resuscitation.
The inquiry also heard about the impact of poor communication with d/Deaf patients. It was not properly communicated to a d/Deaf patient that he might need to go on a ventilator due to a lack of sign language interpretation. His wife, Dr Sarah Powell, who is also d/Deaf, shared with the inquiry “He was so isolated in hospital, he was so alone with no communication and no support. No interpreter provision.”
This followed the harrowing experience of having to send a text message for an ambulance while her husband couldn’t breathe due to a lack of British Sign Language support in emergency services phone lines. It took 30 minutes for the ambulance service to arrive following the text message.
Dr Powell shared with the inquiry how they had to use their hearing child as an interpreter when the ambulance arrived. “It was life or death, my husband couldn’t breathe so I had to use my son for communication. And I don’t know what it was like for him, I can only imagine. You know, to see his father in this state.”
The inquiry is likely to see more evidence of ways that d/Deaf and Disabled people were failed during the pandemic in the coming weeks. The mainstream media is picking up on these stories increasingly with the above covered in the BBC Covid inquiry podcast.