Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure home carers can access adequate and affordable supplies of personal protective equipment.
The Government is doing everything it can to get home carers the personal protective equipment (PPE) they need to provide care and support safely. On 11 May, we published guidance to support the health and wellbeing of those in the adult social care workforce.
As part of our commitment to ensure that social care receives the PPE it needs, we continue to supply PPE to selected wholesalers to support social care. Additionally, we deliver PPE to all Local Resilience Forums to allow them to respond to urgent local spikes in need across the adult social care system. The National Supply Disruption Response operates a 24-hour helpline that can also respond to emergency PPE requests. Finally, we are rolling out a PPE Portal to help primary and social care providers to order critical PPE.