I’d rather die than be put in one of our dreadful care homes

NHS psychiatrist Max Pemberton may make you rethink your life

HEALTH Minister Caroline Dinenage spoke good sense this week when she called on care homes to install CCTV in communal areas to prevent abuse and neglect of residents.

i’m only sorry that she stopped short of demanding them to be made a legal requirement. i’ve long argued for this. Too many appalling instances of verbal and physical abuse have come to light, not through offical inspections, but by the determined efforts of relatives and friends of elderly and disabled residents.

They may have seen or heard something that worried them, or just acted on a hunch, and then covertly installed cameras in their loved one’s room.

And what has emerged has shocked them to the core — and the rest of us when the footage is made public: cruel, callous or mocking treatment, violence even, towards society’s most vulnerable.

But what about those residents who have no one to look out for them? Aren’t they entitled to protection, too?

We know that CCTV works. Since 2014, reports of serious injury in care homes have risen by more than 40 per cent, but the trend has been reversed in homes that have, with the appropriate consents, installed cameras to monitor staff and patients.

So, yes, CCTV should be made a licensing requirement of residential care homes.

But there is a far greater problem here. Ms Dinenage was responding to a study by the Department of Old Age Psychiatry at university College London.

researchers spoke to 1,544 staff working in 92 care homes and found evidence of mistreatment in 91 out of 92 homes. it means that almost every person currently in a care home is living in an environment where abuse or neglect is occurring.

This is an utterly shaming indictment of the system — but you’d never know from the reaction to the study. A junior minister makes a few comments about more CCTV and that’s it?

JUST imagine the response if a study found this level of abuse or neglect in 99 per cent of children’s homes. There’d be front-page headlines, questions in the house of Commons, those responsible named and shamed, and the homes would be shut down.

Why is it so different when we are found to be failing the elderly? how can we in all conscience condone dumping vast numbers of old people in sub- standard homes where they are at risk of abuse and neglect? i believe it is yet more evidence of the insidious ageism that persists in society.

it breaks my heart. i know so many nurses and care assistants who struggle valiantly to do their absolute compassionate best in the most trying of environments.

But i’ve also observed levels of care that are beyond dire in some homes where i’ve provided medical cover. residents left in pain, or in soiled clothes, struggling to feed themselves, shouted at, disrespected, denied dignity. Then there is the benign neglect of indifference and apathy from a workforce that is chronically under- staffed, underpaid and under-trained. i’d rather die than end up in such a place.

i welcome the proposal by health Secretary Matt hancock this week for a new insurance system to fund care in old age. it is just one of several radical ideas outlined in a forthcoming green Paper on social care. it’s about time we started talking seriously about this vast problem.

But we cannot ignore the rights and needs of those in care now.

We need an immediate culture change, and the only way we’ll get it is through tougher legislation that guarantees hefty fines or prison sentences for care home owners, management and staff, who must be held personally responsible for failings.

A society that fails its most vulnerable shames us all.