The UK Covid-19 Inquiry has today (Monday 30 June 2025) published its latest Every Story Matters record documenting the profound impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the adult social care sector, including powerful personal accounts from families, care workers, unpaid carers and people with care and support needs from across the UK.
The Inquiry has examined more than 47,000 personal stories shared through Every Story Matters, the largest public engagement exercise ever undertaken by a UK public inquiry. The record is also made up of experiences gathered in 336 research interviews and 38 events held across the four nations.
The latest record is published on the opening day of public hearings for the Inquiry’s sixth investigation: Module 6 ‘Care Sector’. The investigation, including five weeks of public hearings, will consider the consequences of government decision-making – including restrictions imposed on those living and working within the care sector and the decision to discharge patients from hospitals to adult care and residential homes.
This new Every Story Matters record brings together contributors’ experiences of the adult social care sector. The record, sets out a wide range of experiences of the pandemic including:
- Families experienced trauma, fearing their loved ones died feeling abandoned and alone – losses that have led to ongoing mental health challenges for many
- People with care and support needs described feeling lonely and isolated
- Those living alone described their struggles with daily tasks due to reduced domiciliary care and support
- People, particularly those with dementia or learning disabilities, experienced distress and declining health when unable to understand why they were alone
- Concerns about the inconsistent use of Do Not Attempt Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (DNACPR) notices
- Major staffing shortages strained the care workforce, with many working longer hours, sometimes to ensure residents did not die alone
- Domiciliary carers found it distressing to have visit times reduced, limiting care to only basic needs
- Many care staff and loved ones described feeling helpless and frustrated providing end-of-life care without appropriate training when healthcare professionals were unable to visit
- Care homes highlighted challenges around discharge from hospitals, with many having to take in residents unknown to them and often without accurate Covid-19 status
- Limited supply and quality of PPE, with added communication challenges that the masks presented
The stories in this Every Story Matters record highlight some of the most challenging circumstances for carers, care home residents and their families during the pandemic. By documenting these deeply personal experiences, we ensure that the voices of those who suffered, cared, and grieved during the pandemic will help inform the Inquiry’s recommendations to ensure the care sector is better prepared in the future.
I would like to sincerely thank every one of the tens of thousands of people who shared their stories. They not only contributed to this latest comprehensive record but also engaged with Every Story Matters to help the Inquiry learn lessons for the future.
Every Story Matters records help the Chair, Baroness Hallett, to reach conclusions and make recommendations for the future. Three other records have been published so far, ‘Healthcare Systems’ (September 2024), ‘Vaccines and Therapeutics (January 2025)’ and ‘Test,Trace and Isolate’ (May 2025).
Detailed in the latest record, carers and residents reflect on the impact of lockdown restrictions:
I am disabled and I have a terminal autoimmune disease, so I was shielding… During the pandemic, I felt lost, isolated, lonely, forgotten and scared…Although my sister and her family live next door we did not meet but had a daily phone call for 10 minutes as she looks after her disabled daughter, so was very busy.
When he became really ill, it was really draining and scary and very, very lonely.
Of course, people would ring and say, ‘If there’s anything we could do’ but there was nothing because, in the first [lockdown], they weren’t allowed in the house. You were totally isolated.
Her dementia declined rapidly when lockdown happened and she’d got no
family support. So, she’d not got her family coming to see her. She just kind of lost all will. She wasn’t bothered. She really declined. Yes, you can speak to them over the phone. But she didn’t understand that that was her daughter or her son or her grandchild she was speaking to, because she couldn’t physically see their face
Many people lost loved ones who had care and support needs:
The family are devastated that we were not able to be with him at the end of his life. We grieve that he did not get the send-off he deserved from his loving and very close family and it breaks our hearts as we feel he was deserted at the very time he needed us.
She could not understand why she could only see me only through the window…she stopped eating because she was depressed by life without visitors, and very brief care visits from the staff.
Care staff found it very difficult with additional pressures they were under:
We had a gentleman who was end of life who didn’t end up in hospital because we nursed him ourselves, which, again, we’re not a nursing home. So, really, we shouldn’t be doing that. We literally had to call the family in at the last minute, so that they could say goodbye and then they had to leave, it was awful, it was absolutely awful. I don’t think I would’ve put up with it if it was my family.
Burnout and stress mostly. Yes, because we were all covering so many shifts. Then somebody would get ill with Covid, couldn’t come in for a long period of time, or get ill and not come in for a long period of time. So, yes, there was a lot of pressure.
The inconsistent application of DNACPR notices caused considerable confusion, frustration and upset amongst families and carers:
I refused when they said, ‘We’re going to give everybody a DNACPR’, and I went, ‘You’re absolutely not’. My residents will make that decision for themselves. You’re not going to enforce that, so don’t be sending anybody here because you’re not doing that. I asked the question. I asked everybody the question because who knew what was going to happen, but I wouldn’t let anybody come in and do that.
I have a disability...I am still shaken to the very core of my being, that they imposed ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ notices on those of us with a significant disability or over a certain age.
Support available
The Inquiry acknowledges that some content in the record and the extracts above include descriptions of death, neglect and significant harm which may be distressing or triggering. If you are affected by this content, please know that support services are available via the Inquiry website.