‘NEW LAW’ TO PUT CCTV IN CARE HOMES
Former Attorney General launches campaign to protect elderly
A CAMPAIGN was today launched demanding that every care home in Britain be fitted with surveillance cameras to protect residents.
Former Attorney General Dominic Grieve said there is currently no mandatory requirement for providers to use safety monitoring in public areas which critics say leaves vulnerable residents at greater risk of abuse.
Tory MP Mr Grieve says that equipping all communal areas with cameras would help stamp out abuse.
Shocking examples
of abuse and preventable neglect have convinced him to push ministers to make it a legal requirement to install surveillance cameras.
He said: “There have clearly been horrific instances of abuse against residents in care home and the risk of this happening is well known. Therefore we have to take steps to try and prevent it, that’s the big justification.
“Requiring the public parts of care homes to be monitored by CCTV would contribute to reducing the possibility of abuse and make detection easier where it has occurred.”
He has vowed to take a campaign launched by pressure group Care Campaign For The Vulnerable to the highest level in the Government.
Mr Grieve added: “While the issue of cost has to be kept in mind this has to be weighed against the benefits. It is noteworthy an increasing number of professionals see it as a sensible way forward. I will be doing what I can to help achieve this change and I have raised it with ministers. I am seeking a positive response from the Government to what I consider to be a valuable initiative. I want it to succeed.”
He has been moved to act after hearing hundreds of heartbreaking stories passed to Care Campaign For The Vulnerable.
It says only intervention by the Government to change existing regulations, or create a new law, can provide protection to hundreds of thousands of vulnerable residents at risk of mistreatment.
Jayne Connery, who founded the pressure group, said: “This simple step will help safeguard those who are no longer able to safeguard themselves. Numerous cases of horrendous abuse could have been prevented if only cameras had been fitted to cover public areas. What I hear from families every day is a national tragedy. Care homes are failing and these people need protecting. With public trust and confidence so low surely it is time technology was implemented that permitted greater transparency, delivered more certainty and significantly improved trust. We want the Government to listen to our concerns and act.”
Heartbroken families of victims, many of whom only caught carer abuse on covert cameras, argue that overt CCTV in areas like lounges, dining areas, entrances and exits, would require no permission from residents and staff and could be achieved quickly.
They say the vast majority of preventable neglect like rough handling, falls in corridors, and elderly residents, many of who have dementia but are left unattended, takes place in public areas. They claim forcing through new legislation would be a quick and easy win. Campaigners also want to see safety monitoring equipment in private rooms and accommodation but this would not be a legal requirement and would only be fitted with the express permission of residents and their families.
Over the past five years at least 100,000 safeguarding referrals have been investigated but many have reached conclusions based on probability because of a lack of evidence. Campaigners say installing cameras would provide a level of protection for both residents and their carers, many of who provide excellent standards of care. Mrs Connery, 50, set up Care Campaign For The Vulnerable after her dementia-stricken mother Ellen, 80, was attacked in a corridor of a care home. Police could not press charges because there was no CCTV. Under ques- tioning her carer admitted hitting Mrs Connery but walked free.
She said: “When my mother was slapped in her care home I felt powerless. It’s horrific, there is no other word, and I know from those who contact me that it is far more widespread than people think.”
Lib Dem MP Norman Lamb said: “The abuse faced by many elderly people in care homes is a disgrace.
“Any sensible policy that directly tackles abuse, such as requiring CCTV cameras in care homes’ communal areas, should be taken seriously by Government. However, this must be part of a wider effort to tackle the root cause of abuse.”
IT IS a sad indictment of the world in which we live that we must welcome proposals to install CCTV cameras in care homes. It is in fact a tragedy that it has come to this but a seemingly never-ending catalogue of abuse of the frail and the vulnerable means that this is the only sensible course of action to pursue.
As a society we have a duty of care to make sure the elderly are protected and in the recent past there have been too many instances where this has not been done.
The proposals should also allow families the right to install CCTV cameras in individual bedrooms if they so wish. There are clear issues of privacy in this area but for obvious reasons it is in private that some of the worst cases of abuse have taken place.
And it is not only the elderly who suffer. While they are the prime victims of course and should be protected at all costs, it is also extremely distressing for the families involved to learn that their relatives have been treated in such a way.
Britain has been slow to open its eyes to an epidemic of abuse. Most of us will get old and it chills the bones to think such a fate awaits any of us.
The Government is right to act.