Covid-19: Concern for NZ disabled community, support workers after modelling predicts wide spread of Omicron

Monday, 24 January 2022

With the Government’s announcement that New Zealand was moving to th e red traffic light setting due to community cases of Omicron, many prepared to work from home again and stocked up on food from the supermarket.

But for some people in the disability community, worrying about basic necessities during the pandemic was an additional concern – especially with experts expecting that Omicron could infect half of all New Zealanders within a few months.

Christchurch resident Scott Boyle said the beginning of the pandemic was “quite difficult”, because his support workers were going through 10 clients a day.

“The thought of even one of these support workers getting infected, that would cause a pretty major outbreak.”

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Scott Boyle with his two dogs – Hazel the German Shepherd and Archie the Border Collie.

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The 27-year-old has spinal muscular atrophy type 2 and uses a wheelchair.

He has a team of seven permanent support workers who call in three times a day – his staff help him with his personal care, such as showering and toileting.

A potential Omicron outbreak was “definitely concerning”.

Kerri Bonner has a team of four support workers who help her with things she finds difficult, including dressing and eating.

“It is quite stressful, and it does impact you in a lot of different ways, you don’t necessarily think about it until it hits you,” Boyle said.

Even though all his staff wear face masks and use hand sanitiser before entering his home, because of the nature of personal care work, “there’s not a lot you can really do to prevent transmission when you are that close, which is a concern”.

Kerri Bonner, 34, has a team of four support workers who help her with physical activities such as dressing, eating, preparing meals and grocery shopping.

Hannah McLaren, 31, is a disabled person who has been able to secure a job thanks to the normalisation of work-from-home arrangements in the pandemic. Prior to this her mobility disability kept her out of work for many years.

The Christchurch resident, who has cerebral palsy, employs the support staff herself and finds them through Student Job Search and Trade Me.

“Because I am the employer, it puts a lot of responsibility on me to manage the health and safety aspect. If I got Covid, I’m obviously going to still need support but it’s about figuring out how do I make that safe for my support staff.”

Bonner might also have staff needing to stand down if they’d been at a location of interest and needed to self-isolate until their test results came back, putting extra pressure on the other support staff.

She’s also had to consider what would happen if multiple workers got Omicron at the same time.

“Up until now, I’ve been pretty lucky where if someone gets sick then the other support staff will cover, and they’re very good about doing that,” she said.

“It would be good if there was more guidance from the Ministry of Health on how disabled people who employ their own staff should be handling this, because we are employers and we do have the responsibility to ensure that our support staff are working in a safe way.”

Many disability support organisations around New Zealand are finding new ways to manage staff to ensure employees and the people they support are safe.

CCS Disability Action has around 800 in-home and community support workers across the country.

The organisation had split its direct-contact staff into different bubbles so that there would always be support workers available, chief executive Mel Smith said.

“It might not be someone’s regular person but by keeping them in separate bubbles that don’t intersect in the workplace, our aim is to always have people that don’t need to be self-isolating or that aren’t unwell, because the self-isolation part will also become a problem I think, not just the sickness,” she said.

The organisation was also providing information and resources to people in the disability community on what they can do to keep themselves safe.

“I think that’s a fear that people don’t have control over whether they can be safe because you can’t see it,” said Smith. “We are being really mindful about the choices we are making and that they become really obvious and transparent choices, as opposed to things we think about later.

“And if you are adding on top of that, concerns about if you catch the virus, what that may mean for your health and wellbeing, it becomes an incredibly anxiety-inducing time for people.”

Geneva Healthcare provides in-home healthcare to a range of clients – those with disabilities, the elderly and people recovering from illness and injury.

It was expecting between 10 and 30 per cent of staff being away at any one time.

“Our planning includes implementing a number of measures: having additional trained casual staff available, increasing our attraction and recruitment efforts to attract more staff, working with our DHB colleagues, ACC and the Ministry of Health as well as other providers across the sector to identify opportunities for supporting each other and sharing workloads,” said Josephine Gagan, group chief executive of New Zealand Health Group.

“We have a specialist ‘rapid response’ team who are there solely to fill in any gaps left by regular staff to ensure our clients continue to be cared for.”

Health and safety is of the “utmost importance” in the current outbreak, says Maggie Polotu, the national clinical manager at Drake Medox, a disability and homecare support recruitment agency.

“We continue to focus on the physical health and safety of our clients by ensuring our staff receive their boosters for the protection of our clients and community, provide PPE as required, and adhere to strict health and safety measures,” she said.