Voices From The Frontline brings care home stories to stage

I HAVE worked in the dementia field for 30 years, teaching and carrying out research related to long-term care.

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, it was obvious that care homes were going to have a hard time, but we didn’t realise at first how bad it would get.

Around half of all deaths during the first wave of the pandemic were people living in care homes. The official death toll is now around 50,000. In reality we will never know exactly how many people died because there was no testing in those first few weeks when coronavirus swept through care homes like a hurricane.

The University of Bradford introduced a scheme to support Covid-related research and along with colleagues Ana Barbosa and Giorgia Previdoli and Clare Mason (all from the University’s Centre for Applied Dementia Studies) I began to study the impact of the pandemic on care home staff and residents.

No-one could go into care homes due to the lockdown, so we interviewed our own students who work in dementia care whilst studying part-time. We carried out online and telephone interviews, and some students gave us written accounts of their experiences. It was all coming straight from the horse’s mouth and it was devastating.

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The research started in the late spring of 2020 and continued until the beginning of the following year. In between, there had been hopes that the pandemic was over, but then there was another spike in case numbers. As one participant said, “At first we thought ‘We can do it, we can get through this’...but after a while it’s like you’re just running on empty.”

The stories were so gripping that we wanted to go beyond just writing them up in academic journals, and ensure that these voices were heard. Care home staff were getting little attention by comparison with NHS workers, not explicitly included in the weekly clap early in the pandemic, and excluded from a lot of discounts and special offers extended to NHS workers.

When the University organised a festival called UNIfy at the beginning of 2022, I decided to turn the research findings into a play using the participants’ own words (an approach called verbatim theatre).

It’s called Voices from the Frontline and in it, the audience hear how hard it was to implement social distancing with people living with dementia who were often unable to understand the danger to themselves and others, about managers having to ‘beg, borrow or steal’ PPE due to insufficient supplies, about the disastrous policy of discharging people from hospitals to care homes, and the terrible impact on people with dementia and their families of the full year during which visitors were not allowed.

This is also a story of hope. It’s about the resilience of ordinary people, the often heroic efforts care staff made to keep things going under near-impossible circumstances, the creativity and sheer hard work that went into caring during lockdown, and the generosity of local communities. “It brought out the best in people,” as one character says. “It forced them to take a step back and re-evaluate what was important.”

Kathryn Carmichael, a senior carer at a local care home, took part in both the original research and the play, performing a part based on her own words and experiences. She says: “While working through the pandemic was tough, reliving those memories through the play was like going through the whole thing again. It all happened behind closed doors.

“The trauma of what Covid did need to be highlighted and answers need to be given.”

The most recent performances took place to mark the fourth anniversary of the pandemic and were funded through Bradford Council’s Arts, Culture and Heritage awards. Audience feedback was very positive and there were some great discussions afterwards. The words ‘powerful and moving’ were consistently used to describe the play, and we want to keep its message alive. Everyone has a lockdown story to tell, and the play seems to bring these stories out.

The full cast was Kathryn Carmichael, Tuiya Tembo, Susan Bradbury, Clare Mason, Giorgia Previdoli and Rehanna Neky, with myself as narrator and technical support from John Chatwin and Isaac Nash.

It was performed at Caroline Social Club, Saltaire (with live music from SaltEnders), Bradford City Hall, Common Space, and Cottingley Community Centre, during the week March 21-28. The play was performed in memory of University Expert by Experience, Kevin Scanlan, who died in a locked-down care home in September 2020, and whose wife, Karen, was part of the original research.

Thanks also to Michael Andrews, Shabina Aslam, Brian Daniels , Mark Goodall, Linda Jordan and Jan Oyebode for their help and support.