Managers of our ‘don’t-care’ homes must be brought to task
Shocking figures have revealed the extent of abuse, neglect and humiliation meted out to our elderly in lack-of-care homes across the country. Four serious complaints are probed every day by the Care Quality Commission, which has struck off 100 firms in the course of a single year. Dozens have been warned to improve or be stripped of their licence.
It sounds draconian. I fear it is not nearly draconian enough.
Dire failings in the system – in the people who run the system and who work in the system – can no longer be dismissed as aberrations. Lack of food, lack of water, lack of dignity, lack of safety. Threats of violence, coercion, mockery. This is the fate that awaits anyone in 21st century Britain who has the temerity or just the ill-fortune to grow old and frail. And it is still happening. Over and over.
Why are no questions being asked in the House about those too vulnerable to remain in theirs? How dare we call ourselves a civilised nation when we bundle out the old to be uncared-for in places where basic decency is in such short supply?
I’ve wondered about the management that institutionalise such abject neglect. What sort of greedy, amoral individuals must they be to put profits before people, paring back staff numbers so residents are left unwashed, dehydrated, distressed?
Of course there are pockets of best practice, where hygiene and human dignity are a given and those in care are treated with respect and good humour. The rose-tinted old people’s home as featured in this latest series of Cold Feet – all smiles, tea dances and banter – is not nearly as commonplace as we’d like to believe.
My parents are both dead long since. I have no elderly relatives in need of care, yet I feel burning anger at this appalling state of affairs. And as for those who would prey on the elderly and charge them thousands of pounds a month to live in misery, there must be prison sentences, not just five-figure fines payable with a single cheque.
Don’t care must be made to care.