Covid inquiry criticised for sidelining disabled people who received support at home in pandemic

The UK Covid inquiry is guilty of “a deep disservice” to disabled people neglected in their own homes during the pandemic by failing to examine their experiences in detail in its crucial report on the social care system, say campaigners.

On Tuesday, the inquiry published a report on the “devastating” impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the adult social care sector in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

It found that failures by national governments “created environments in care settings in which the virus could spread like wildfire”, and that the claim by Conservative health secretary Matt Hancock that a “protective ring” had been thrown around care homes from the start of the crisis was untrue.

The failure – in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland – to ensure, early in the pandemic, that untested patients discharged from hospitals into care homes were placed in isolation was “a significant omission”, said the inquiry’s chair, Baroness [Heather] Hallett.

The report focuses strongly on this and other impacts of the pandemic on care homes, including the “high risk” they were subjected to, with 43,000 Covid-related deaths of care home residents across the UK, many of whom died in “distressing and lonely” circumstances.

But it fails to provide the same focus on how those disabled people who received care and support in their own homes – described in the report as domiciliary care – were impacted during the pandemic.

The lack of government data means there are no figures to show how many disabled people died due to Covid while receiving domiciliary care, despite those figures being available for care home deaths.

The inquiry does call in the report for this to be put right by the UK and devolved governments ahead of future pandemics, but Baroness Hallett failed to include this demand in the recommendations listed in an appendix at the end of the document, giving the four governments an easy excuse to ignore it.

The decision to sideline the impact of the pandemic on domiciliary care came despite the report estimating that nearly one million disabled people were receiving support to live in their own homes at the start of the pandemic, compared with about half a million people in adult care homes.

Many millions more were supported in their own homes by family and friends providing unpaid care.

An analysis of the report of the inquiry’s sixth module by Disability News Service (DNS) shows that the phrase “care home” appears in the report 1,121 times, whereas “domiciliary care” appears just 146 times.

The report devotes two chapters to care homes (“care home admissions, testing and isolation” and “visiting restrictions in care homes”) but includes no chapters focused on domiciliary care.

There are eight mentions of care homes in the report’s recommendations, and just one brief mention of domiciliary care, although many of the recommendations cover the whole care sector.

There was also no mention of domiciliary care in the comments made by Baroness Hallett on publication of the report, although she mentioned care homes 16 times.

And a press release issued by the inquiry includes 10 references to “care homes” and just one to “domiciliary care”.

While the report found the adult social care sector appeared to have been treated as “something of an afterthought” by the authorities during the pandemic, these figures suggest the inquiry has treated domiciliary care in a similar way.

This mirrors the lack of attention to disabled people receiving support at home during the pandemic, including those relying on direct payments, when – according to the report – the UK government stopped publishing figures after July 2020 for how many disabled people receiving domiciliary care were dying at home from Covid in England.

As disabled people’s organisations highlighted in their evidence to the inquiry, the government focused during the pandemic on care homes, and not on domiciliary or supported care settings, when it responded to issues such as providing personal protective equipment, testing for the virus, and obtaining food.

Georgia Bondy, Covid inquiry manager at Disability Rights UK, one of the four national disabled people’s organisations which were “core participants” in the social care module, said: “Given that the majority of the care workforce cares for people in their own homes, it was disappointing to find that the inquiry provided no recommendations focused specifically on domiciliary care.

“The lack of data on the impact of the pandemic on care at home should have been a rallying cry to the inquiry to explore it more thoroughly, not to focus its attentions elsewhere.

“This oversight does a deep disservice to those disabled people who suffered neglect in care at home during the pandemic.”

A UK Covid-19 Inquiry spokesperson said in a statement issued to DNS: “The module six report examines the impact of the pandemic on the publicly and privately funded adult social care sector across all four nations of the UK.

“On the basis of the evidence she heard, the chair has made recommendations with the whole sector in mind, including those living with disabilities who use residential care, those using domiciliary care and unpaid care.

“The report follows an extensive investigation.

“More than 17,000 documents were disclosed to core participants and five weeks of public hearings took place in summer 2025.

“The inquiry heard evidence from 57 witnesses and received 177 witness statements.

“Disabled people’s experiences have been fundamentally important to the module six investigation.

“The chair heard witness evidence and read witness statements and the ‘Adult Social Care’ Every Story Matters record, which received 46,485 stories shared by members of the public.

“The vast majority of the report’s recommendations are directly relevant to both residential and domiciliary care; only those on isolation facilities and visiting restrictions relate solely to care homes.

“If implemented, the report’s recommendations will make the whole adult social care sector better prepared for the next pandemic.

“Each report published by the chair adds to a growing body of inquiry findings and recommendations.

“Taken together, these form a blueprint for how the UK must better prepare for, and respond to, future pandemics.”