It’s 21 century, we have excellent care homes such as Shedfield Lodge and the homes run by Dementia Care Matters, yet even with CQC inspections, there are homes that fall way below what is acceptable and fail to comply with national and international law.

Homes are run with poor staffing levels and facilities that lead to an abusive, neglective regime.

These are not state run homes, in most cases they are run by for profit organisations.

The Guardians article  Companies running ‘inadequate’ UK care homes make £113m profit is a case in point:

  • Elderly residents soiling themselves after being left because there were too few staff.
  • Staff using “inappropriate and disproportionate use of physical restraint” on residents with autism.
  • Patients being left waiting for long periods for under-pressure care workers to attend after ringing their call bells.
  • Carers failing to treat elderly residents with dignity and respect, with patients’ underwear being left exposed and faeces left smeared on a bedrail cushion.
  • Residents being placed at risk of abuse by other patients, with one being seriously harmed after an attack, and staff failing to safely manage medicines.

A common comment is lack of staff, yet they made £113m profit, go figure.

Another example: Mary Parkes was ‘stripped of her dignity’ at London care home

There is also an interview with Esther Rantzen: Britons treat older people ‘worse than animals’

Where do relatives go to raise concerns ?

What happens when they do?

Complaining to a homes manager can lead to a relative being labelled a trouble maker.

I have come across relatives that have been refused entry to visit, have had court orders taken out against them and in one case, the Police were there to stop them visiting their relative!!

The Government has said that it is stopping all PFI funding of projects so maybe it is time for the poorly performing care home’s to be brought back into local authority/NHS control.

Margaret Thatcher’s “Care in the Community” policy was laudable in principle but the devil as always was in the detail and lack of funding led to homes being sold off to the private sector en mass.

It removed the Victorian Institutions but have they been replaced with a modern version of institutions.

Maybe removing people from their family and community, in many cases via DOLS and the proposed LPS is not always the right way to go.

It certainly goes against the UN CRPD and don’t forget reader, that when we are denoted as not having medical/mental capacity, we never lose legal capacity.

This means that the UN conventions still apply to us as International Law and all decisions regarding determining our capacity, best interests and our care thereafter should be undertaken inline with said International Law.

How many professionals apply the articles in the CRPD to their decision making progress?

How may professionals know and understand the CRPD?

These questions and many more are beginning to be asked by people living with Dementia, their care partner and other family members.

With the damning Statement on Visit to the United Kingdom, by Professor Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights – 16 November 2018 and the end of PPI claims here in the UK in August 2019, maybe solicitors will turn their attention to Human Rights and the abuses taking place in 21st Century Britain.

May be we will see more companies and professionals in court for these abuses.

Maybe even those professional that question peoples diagnosis and abilities, even though they are not involved in their care and they are of course questioning the professional competency of the professionals that give us our diagnosis.

But that is a Rant for another time.