The elderly deserve a better care system
An important new report from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has highlighted the alarmingly substandard levels of care for the elderly in this country. What is particularly depressing is that matters appear to be getting worse. The regulator reports that 23 per cent of care services require improvement on safety while a further two per cent, covering almost 20,000 people, are rated as inadequate. Where nursing homes are concerned, one in three is failing – and these are the institutions that care for people with the highest level of need.
One purpose of a body like the CQC is to expose shortcomings to be addressed, not ignored. Yet the latest study offers a familiar tale of poorly trained and badly paid staff, few of whom stay in post for more than a month or two, delivering lamentable levels of care to old and often confused residents. Problems include people being washed and dressed and put back to bed to make it easier for staff, residents getting too little to eat and drink or not being helped to go to the lavatory in time.
How long must this carry on? Pressures are going to grow, with higher minimum wage levels making homes more expensive to operate, putting some out of business, and Brexit possibly cutting off a source of staffing. And yet the quality of care workers, and low pay, are part of the problem. Squaring the circle seems beyond the powers of politicians. What is needed is a fundamental reform to the way we deliver public services and a renewed focus on spending priorities. Amid the political debate over ending austerity, scrapping tuition fees or lifting the public sector pay cap little consideration is given to which sectors deserve more. As an analysis by the Taxpayers’ Alliance has shown, there has never really been a cut in overall public spending, which has fallen by just 0.2 per cent since 2009, but some areas, like care, have been hit hard.
We need to decide as a country not just how to live within our means and avoid pushing up national debt still further but also how we spend revenues. Given demographic trends, most people might regard elderly provision as a priority, especially when hospitals, at great cost, are otherwise left to look after those failed by the care system. Andrea Sutcliffe, chief inspector of adult social care at the CQC, says the levels of care were “totally unacceptable in the modern era”. So why do we continue to accept them?