Patchwork social service departments are scrambling to address the fallout of coronavirus restrictions, and social workers say vast numbers of at-risk, elderly, sick and disabled Americans will be imperiled. “ We are going to see some deaths.
While most Americans huddle inside their homes watching and worrying as the coronavirus pandemic stalks the world, desperate emails have flooded into ProPublica, some almost shouting their fears for the unknown victims of the vast and unprecedented national shutdown.
For her developmentally impaired clients, who are locked down in their homes, a Florida social worker wrote of her fear, unable to even use the toilet without help. If she and her colleagues fall sick, what's going to happen to them?
In our caseloads, we're going to see some deaths,' she said in an interview. "Until they've been dead for several days, we may not even know about it."
"In Oklahoma, a medical technician asked us to keep an eye on the elderly of the country, identifying nursing homes that rely on" cans of Lysol as their key protection in poorly ventilated hallways. "Social distancing, he wrote," is nonexistent in such areas.
"A child protective services worker in the Northeast submitted a frightening list of what held her up at night:" That my parents would literally run out of food, milk, diapers. That any of them would die because of lack of therapy. That certain children can be hurt or harmed when their desperate parents attempt to function without insufficient supervision. The stress may lead to more abuse of children.
"And an outreach worker in Manhattan, who brings food and supplies to the homeless, plainly wrote:" We are drowning.
It feels, "she wrote," like our city has abandoned our customers completely, and our business has abandoned our employees.
These are dispatches from the front lines of the beleaguered social support system of America, which, at the best of times, struggles to provide for millions of marginalized people. They wrote by the dozens, recommending that the country not neglect a secondary problem arising from the global pandemic: that those who already live on the margins, many of whom rely on consistent, face-to-face survival support, will suffer from public outlook, kept shut behind doors to keep the virus out.
They worried in emails and calls that skyrocketing unemployment would further stress violence-prone households. They expected that older people, already at the greatest risk, would lose support for both family and social work as they became further separated. Others agonized about the implications if they did not see children or support the disabled or ailing in neglectful or violent households.
Then there are the collateral victims of the virus that, like the victims of rape or sexual assault, maybe few have pondered, who may stay away from overrunning hospitals for fear of exposure.
Rachel Walker, a nurse and incoming director of the Ph.D. program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst College of Nursing said, 'I think we are seeing the public health system in the United States being revealed for what it is, which is really a patchwork of extremely vulnerable microsystems that are each on their own scrambling to respond as quickly as possible,'
Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared stricter controls on regulating travel on Friday in New York, where the pandemic is claiming millions of lives. He exempted staff in human resources but did not provide details to protect them or their customers.
Over the past week, ProPublica reporters have spoken with more than two dozen such workers in New York and across the country. What they describe is a system unprepared to deal with a national health crisis, lacking clear backup plans and rife with confusion over guidelines from federal, state, and local agencies. The choices foisted on them, they said, were gutting. Some said they themselves are living just above the poverty level; a missed home visit could mean a missed paycheck at a crucial time.
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