Care Qualty Commission
Care, cruelty and commissions
Sorry, folks. Some weeks I simply can’t rise to light-hearted banter. And I’m feeling mightily churned up about this one.
Did you watch the BBC Panorama programme on the atrocious cruelty and abuse taking place in the Castlebeck Care residential hospital for young adults with learning disabilities and autism near Bristol? I had every intention of doing so but, I confess, I was a coward. I had to switch off part way through; it was simply too sickening to observe. How relatives, never mind the abused victims, feel is beyond my comprehension. And this was but the tip of the iceberg: the whistleblower said, ‘Human rights were violated every day.’
Since the programme was aired, the papers, TV and radio have been full of it and other stories like it. And I make no apology for adding my mite. It’s too big to ignore.
It transpires that the story behind that BBC exposé is equally shocking. The abuses were reported repeatedly to management and to the Care Quality Commission. And nothing – absolutely nothing – was done about them. I personally know of homes where the residents are being lovingly cared for, but the Commission officers haul the staff over the coals for failing to document things adequately. How can this discrepancy exist? What are the guidelines, regulations and policies all about?
Now these particular violations are public, of course, there’s the usual wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth, a rash of promises, apologies and threats. And the sheer scale of the abuse means it will have shocked people into taking notice this time. But will the contrition last? Or will blind eyes still be turned? When greedy investors see a chance for a fast buck (the authorities were paying an average of £3,500 a week at the Bristol establishment)? When homes ‘cannot afford’ to hire suitably qualified and motivated staff? When the authorities ‘cannot cope’ with policing the homes they’re designed to regulate?
Because this isn’t an isolated case. Reports have been and are still being compiled. We’ve already heard about one young man who actually died following habitual restraint at another Castlebeck establishment in 2006. About residents being allowed to virtually starve. About frail and disabled folk being left in their own excrement. About doctors feeling compelled to prescribe water to ensure elderly patients get that most basic of humane provisions. About dozens of homes being closed, hundreds of carers losing their jobs.
You’d have to be living in deepest darkest isolation not to know we’ve got a massive demographic problem on our hands. Too many elderly and disabled people needing care. Local authorities cutting their contributions to residential homes. And the numbers still rising as medicine improves and people live longer. I don’t have the answers. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. But almost every family will face difficult decisions about care at some stage in their lives. And irrespective of our personal involvement we surely can’t just stand by when appalling abuses are being meted out to society’s most vulnerable citizens. The Scottish Government have this week pledged, in this their second term of office, to rise to the challenge of driving up standards in the face of financial restrictions. What form this resolve will take we don’t know yet, but time will tell.
And in the meantime it behoves us all to think long and hard about what kind of a society we want for our most vulnerable citizens. And to stand up and be counted. As Confucius said: To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice.