Scandal of Britain’s ‘don’t care’ homes

Older people have to rely on not-fit-forpurpose social care

MY lovely mum’s ear-piercing, animal scream as I walked into her care home still haunts me.

I didn’t know it was her. I guessed it was some other poor soul, sick of life and heartbroken that it was ending in a never-ending monotony of early to bed, early to rise, and sitting in a semicircle staring at the telly.

I often wake up at night with that guttural wail in my ears, the sound that summed up 45 years of marriage, three children and a life of hard work, all come to this.

We are all going to get old, if we’re lucky enough to live that long, right? It’s one of life’s indisputable facts. Eventually some of us will be too frail to live alone.

There was a time when family would step in and care. Now, though, with more and more people having to work full-time until retirement, increasingly older people are forced to rely on our underfunded, too often not-fit-for-purpose social care system, or to seek residential care.

Good luck with that. On Thursday Mum’s plight tormented me once more following the Care Quality Commission (CQC)’s findings that a quarter of all care services were failing on safety, with clients receiving poor care, wrong medication and shoddy accommodation. I could have told them that.

In some care homes I’ve seen, how about adding clients often wearing other residents’ clothes, or clothes that have shrunk due to a boiling-hot wash, spectacles and dentures disappear into thin-air, and there’s excessive use of dangerous anti-psychotic medication. Incontinence pads pile up in rooms, there’s dubious cleanliness, missing possessions, unfit-for-purpose equipment, rigid cut-price meal schedules, horrible infected urine pongs owing to dehydration – tea and coffee are offered, hardly ever water – and the list goes on.

Earlier in the week I received an e-mail from a nursing home care assistant who’s worked in the sector for 20 years.

She says: “I am on the minimum wage and spend my 12-hour shift running around like a headless chicken. I am a good, compassionate carer. I do not see compassion, dignity, good, person-centred care, equality etc going on around me.

“Why do some care workers who’ve been warned about speaking rudely, arguing with, upsetting and even roughhandling residents, get away with it? Why do I hear about owners being cash-strapped if we ask for a pay rise?

“My boss has a few homes and is a multimillionaire. Why is everything swept under the carpet and the CQC not aware of what is really going on in these homes? Why am I so tired, physically and mentally, after moving, hoisting, pushing wheelchairs about, answering buzzers etc, only to be told we have enough staff ?” Because care is not valued, that’s why. A very small percentage of care homes, usually those where residents are privately, rather than local authority funded, pay the living wage. Local authority funding has been slashed under the Tory’s austerity measures. Many of the big, private chains are more concerned with lining their shareholders’ pockets than employing excellent staff on the living wage. When I last met David Behan, Chief Exec of the CQC, he assured me that “Unannounced inspections will be a crucial part of our strategy”. Over 95% of their visits are unannounced, but they can’t cover each and every home. “We need people to give us their views about their service,” he said. Please take him up on that. Or let me know and I’ll get on the case. Care should always be exceptional. What is the quality of life, if we don’t care? I could scream.