Caroline, Abrahams, the charity director at Age UK, said the report was “devastating”.
“When Covid took off, people using social care and the staff and unpaid carers providing it were left totally exposed.”
She added it also demonstrated how important the overhaul of social care promised by Andy Burnham when he became prime minister was.
“If a national care service had already been in place… the various disasters that befell social care during the pandemic would have been lessened and some might have been avoided altogether.”
Meanwhile, Natalie Grayson, from the GMB union, said care workers were “left vulnerable and terribly exposed” during the pandemic which saw “care homes turned into morgues”.
“That cannot be allowed to happen again,” she added.
Nadra Ahmed, co-chair of the National Care Association, which represents care providers in England described the findings as “really upsetting”, adding that the social care workforce has “never fully recovered” from the pandemic.
She said we need to “start thinking about social care in a more constructive way” and the mantra that “we all had to protect the NHS” appears to have come at the cost of “some care home residents’ lives”.
Health Secretary Yvette Cooper said the government would provide a “full response” to the report’s recommendations “in due course”.
Speaking in the Commons, Cooper said she agreed that social care had been “undervalued and under-recognised” for too long.
“My thoughts are with all those who lost loved ones in the pandemic, and especially those who endured the immense distress and harm of visiting restrictions in care homes, which meant they could not be with loved ones even as they died,” she added.