"None of us were prepared to let the virus rip through the most vulnerable residents of our city."
Photo by Liz Finlayson/Vervate
Reflections on the pandemic and the efforts by frontline workers in Brighton to protect those who were homeless – by Arch CEO, Gary Bishop.
I had this terrible cough. I just couldn’t shake it.
There was talk about a virus in China and fears were rising but the advice was very clear; unless you’ve travelled to China recently then you are not at risk. So I felt pretty much fine apart from the damn cough so, as we did back then, I carried on as normal.
It was early March and my friend & colleague Tim was with me as we made our annual pilgrimage to the Pathway conference in London. I attended a session in the afternoon about COVID19 and was increasingly aware that I was suppressing my cough so I discretely moved myself to the back of the crowded room for fear of being lynched.
An hour later Tim and I were on the train back to Brighton when the first serious UK COVID announcement landed, “Anyone who has a cough, or has been in contact with anyone who has a cough MUST ISOLATE FOR 2 WEEKS”. What??
The implications hit us immediately, I was staying at home for two weeks for starters. The Arch team would, for the first of many times, be decimated as those who had been in contact with anything that may be Covid19 had to stay home. Our phones lit up as we began emergency planning with colleagues and over the next few hours it began to dawn on us just how tough this was going to be. We had no idea just how difficult things would get and how long the pandemic would last.
In the end, I worked almost entirely from home for 18 months while my wife – and one of Arch’s Advanced Nurse Practitioners – Hannah, helped lead the clinical charge.
Working from our make-shift desks at home, coming to terms with regular video calls for the first time, social distancing, managing home-schooling and family needs, interpreting ever-changing guidance, and reassuring our team around constant change, anxiety and disruption. All remotely.
Our first challenge was to find homes for over 400 people who were either sleeping rough or in accommodation with shared facilities. The collaborative response from partners was impressive, quickly securing hotels and setting them up with infection control measures and round the clock health and social care input. None of us were prepared to let the virus rip through the most vulnerable residents of our city.
With no testing yet available our doctors and nurses assessed people over the phone and allocated them into accommodation for ‘likely Covid19’, ‘possible Covid19’, ‘no sign of Covid 19’, residents were monitored daily for changes and moved whenever necessary. Working with partners, our entire clinical team were deployed offsite for almost a year and our work in the Arch surgery was carried out by locums. We remained open for necessary appointments every single day of the pandemic.
On February 9th 2021, I pulled up next to a St. John Ambulance mobile treatment centre with a tray of hot coffee & biscuits. It was one of the coldest days of the year. Inside the treatment centre was Hannah (an Arch nurse) with Caterina (a colleague from Sussex Community Foundation Trust), they were absolutely frozen and glad to put cold fingers around steaming cups. Outside, there were equally frozen workers from Justlife stewarding a queue of people waiting for their first Covid-19 vaccine. This felt like the first sign of hope… there was still a long way to go and it would be another year before things returned to anything like normal.
There were many remarkable things about this period:
- The collaboration of partners. Everyone worked incredibly well together to care for and protect the most vulnerable.
- Speed of change. We had full permission from the NHS, the local authority and others to do whatever we thought necessary. Stuff got done – and quickly.
- NO-ONE DIED. In the first 4 months of the Covid response no Arch patient died of any cause. (For perspective: In Brighton & Hove, tragically 3-4 people who are homeless die every month. This figure has returned to its awful normal since the Covid response ended.)
On reflection I feel so, so proud of what we did in those years – we were the NHS and we stood up.
P.S. I didn’t have Covid, it was just a cough….. I think.
