Posted: Friday, 4 January 2019 @ 13:43
If you keep reading your newspapers you will see increasing stories of individuals being abused within the care homes.
For example, it was just reported that the sickening behaviour of two care assistants in a private care home. Rita Page and Lynette Crook, two carers at Priory Highbank hospital in Greater Manchester, were secretly filmed slapping, jabbing and taunting a brain-damaged man as he lay groaning in his bed. They face jail after they pleaded guilty to charges of ill treatment of the patient, who was being cared for in the £3,000-a-week specialist facility.
This abuse was exposed not through any formal investigation, but because the man’s parents became concerned, and secretly filmed the behaviour.
In fact, the regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) had assessed the home in February this year and found it to be “meeting national standards”.
Or last year it was found by a coroner that 19 elderly patients died amid "institutionalised abuse" at a care home where residents were left thirsty and malnourished and staff falsified medical records. In five of these cases, the neglect suffered by residents at Orchid View care home in Copthorne, West Sussex, was deemed to have contributed directly to their deaths.
Again the regulator is under scrutiny with the Care Quality Commission having given Orchid View a "good" rating in 2010.
Dealing with regulation, this may be due to a problem with the actual form of regulation. Unlike Ofsted inspections, whereby teachers are observed doing their job over a period, the assessments get only a very brief snapshot of the actual care delivered. Inspectors will talk to some of the residents, but what about those who cannot communicate and yet are the most vulnerable to abuse?
However, I think the issue is perhaps more fundamental. Elderly people within society have not been treated with respect. And we are living through a process of change as a number of variables come into play and this is changing.
1 An increase in the number of elderly people. More and more of us have elderly relatives and we do not like what we see how they are treated.
2 A view is developing that this is not a way to treat people. I think abuse of elderly has gone on but effectively we have turned a blind eye to it. Now this situation is less tolerated.
3. An increased ability to find wrongdoing. You are seeing more and more video evidence(as in the Rita Page/Lynette Crook) being used.(very easy to set up). This has its own legal and ethical issues but it is one way to see what is happening.
Whilst the Care Quality Commission is changing its own regime, it still has a way to go. With more law firms entering the market and acting for families of injured elderly residents, the elderly human rights issue is one to watch.