Barbara Rymell, who suffered from dementia, was 91 when she fell down some stairs and became trapped under a stairlift after being left unattended at her Somerset care home. Her two carers, who were Romanian and Indian, were unable to explain to emergency services what had happened, failing to understand the difference between the resident being “alive” and “alert,” or “breathing” and “bleeding.”
An inquest has heard that their poor grasp of English meant it was “virtually impossible” for the call handler to make a “meaningful” assessment of Mrs. Rymell’s condition, which was classified as “serious” rather than requiring an “immediate” response. By the time paramedics did arrive at the home, Mrs. Rymell had died.
Samantha Marsh, who is the senior coroner for Somerset, said that one of the workers “was not qualified or permitted to work in the UK” because they had never passed a Secure English Language Test, which is used to prove a foreign worker can read, speak, write, and understand the language. Addressing the government, she added:
I am concerned that those working with vulnerable people who are in a position of trust and responsibility must be able to demonstrate a sufficient proficiency in English to enable them to summon appropriate emergency medical attention when needed.
Reports have failed to mention the need for carers to demonstrate sufficient proficiency in English to summon care outside of emergency situations, that is, to hold the most basic day-to-day conversations that keep people—especially vulnerable people—ticking by.
Instead, reports following the news of Mrs. Rymell’s tragic death warned that “the elderly and disabled will ‘pay a heavy price’ for the government’s crackdown on foreign care workers.” More than 100,000 visas were issued to care workers in the year to September under the watch of the Conservative Party, which has exempted them from an increase in the minimum salary threshold needed to employ foreign employees.
But this demonstration of the language barrier risks is illustrative of a wider issue in this underpaid arena. Henry George, who writes for The European Conservative and receives care for a disability, wrote on X:
I’m saddened, but not surprised at this. Some of the carers I’ve had in the fairly recent past have lacked basic English to the point of not understanding when they were asked to raise my bed with its remote control. It’s not a small problem.
All this after more than a decade of Tory rule, though not without the party’s awareness. In 2014, when the now-returned David Cameron was prime minister, there was a national discussion on some foreign care workers failing to speak English proficiently. The brother of one dementia sufferer at the time told the BBC:
The dynamic between the carers and a frightened man who was suffering with dementia didn’t work most of the time. Almost all the carers were from overseas, mainly from Poland.
I found some of them exceptionally difficult to understand, which meant my brother, in his condition, was never going to understand them, and the reaction from him was to hide or get slightly violent.
The care minister then said communication skills would be required for the Care Certificate. Writer Hugh Muir commented in The Guardian that “the government is on the case.”
Clearly, the government was not on the case. There is no indication that this has—or, indeed, will—change.
