COMMENT Care Campaign For The Vulnerable

WHEN penning these comments, it’s difficult not to let our absolute anger and despair creep into the text.

Care Campaign For The Vulnerable has for many years been raising serious failings with care homes.

We have been imploring them to consider safety monitoring as an antidote to possible abuse, wilful neglect and simple carelessness.

Yet, the vast majority have refused to adopt such systems, hiding behind the “privacy” argument.

As a result, all forms of abuse continue. Unexplained bruising, neglect, dramatic weight loss, unmanaged incontinence, stained clothes, dehydration and infection.

CCFTV sees vast numbers of such complaints. It’s clear senior management teams appear not to care about the possible abuses perpetrated in their homes.

The automatic response seems to be one of concealment, with an occasional apology when a raised incident is verified.

Families have had to resort to hidden cameras or taking photos when visiting to ensure evidence is available.

With very few exceptions, providers don’t seek to be proactive about ensuring care delivery is of a high standard.

Inadequate

Large corporate care home companies point to their audits and the processes in place to monitor services.

Yet they continue to be exposed for serious failings.

And this is despite inspection ratings often suggesting they have a good or outstanding service.

That points to the Care Quality Commission watchdog being at best reactive and at worst woefully inadequate.

Many companies are quick to tell a good news story or reveal a positive inspection but the reality is much darker.

Well-paid executives simply don’t care about your mum or dad. They know that safety monitoring options such as CCTV cameras have been available for years, yet they completely ignore their use.

They don’t want you to know what is happening in care homes, which means nothing will change and physical and mental neglect and abuse will continue.

We would urge families not to consider care homes unless they have safety monitoring in place.

We would also urge families to begin naming and shaming companies and to become much more outspoken.

CCFTV has urged ministers to mandate safety monitoring systems in care homes.

Like many providers, they have ignored our pleas.