Frontline staff deserve more respect

In the UK, Premier League footballers are opening their hotels and flats to medical staff who need somewhere near the hospital to get a few hours rest.

When times are tough, people know who to thank.

They are the people who cannot go home, lock the door and wait until the storm passes by. They have to go out each day and meet it head on, putting their lives at risk in the process.

Frontline workers such as ambulance crews, emergency ward teams, teachers and police are the first who come to mind.

But in this crisis it goes much further than that.

It is unsung workers such as bus drivers, cleaners, supermarket checkout staff, GP receptionists, dockers and freight workers who bring in the vital supplies upon which we all rely.

It is nursery school staff, care home workers and prison warders, who go to work each day knowing close contact is part of the job.

Each is now a key worker, recognised as such by the States. Each will keep this island going, come what may.

It would be nice to think, when this crisis eventually passes, that some of the goodwill and respect currently flowing in the direction of frontline staff will be remembered.

For too long our society has not placed enough value on people without whom it all falls apart.

It is not so long ago that the headlines were very different.

Nurses were out marching on the streets asking for pay parity and threatening to strike.

Teachers, likewise, felt ignored and undervalued as the secondary school transformation argument raged.

All aspects of society have value. But the pendulum has swung too far away from those in public service who we know we need but somehow can never afford to give the status they deserve.

For as Dawn Bilbrough, the critical care nurse who made an emotional appeal against selfish panic buying, says: ‘It’s people like me that are going to be looking after you when you’re at your lowest.’