Behind closed doors
I wonder, when there is a serious complaint lodged against a Care Home – is there not some kind of ‘Task Force’ can be sent in pending the investigations and outcomes ?
That process already exists – it is carried out behind very firmly ‘closed doors’ so that no ‘normal human being’ will ever know the full detail. My experience of it:
Any major complaint made to a care home should by law be passed to CQC. If a human being contacts CQC with their complaint, the CQC merely passes it back to the care home. The Manager can – if s/he chooses – completely whitewash the complaint, as far as the “file” is concerned. Only if a family member is persistent will that be seen to have happened.
The CQC may pass a seriously serious complaint to the local authority and/or care home itself. CQC does not get involved.
Investigation is conducted by the local authority or by an Independent Nurse Consultant, if need be and if the local authority/SS department/mental health team (in the case of dementia care) feel ‘unsuitably qualified or ill-equipped’ to carry out the investigation, because of the seriousness of it. It can take a month before that investigation begins, especially if the person at the centre of it has died. Everyone goes into a panic; a numbness sets in which does nothing to protect the remaining residents.
If it is obviously ‘seriously serious’, there is an immediate ‘Action Plan’ imposed on the care home. Before even the Report of the Investigation is presented to whoever commissioned it.
At that point, CQC will be ‘invited’ to attend the Establishment Concerns meetings that are held, behind firmly closed doors again, within the local authority. The care home Manager will be invited to attend, as will the Regional Manager of the care provider. Plus a few other local authority bods, including the Adult Protection team of the local authority.
But, the family of anyone who may have suffered gross neglect/harm/damage in that care home is not allowed to attend. They are not allowed any information about the proceedings.
It can take another 6 months before the Chair of those meetings decides whether or not s/he chooses “to share any information” from that investigation with the family members of the person who perhaps brought the serious complaint to the notice of them all.
The family member can then demand to see the Report of that investigation, but it will be refused initially, although eventually may be graciously granted access to a ‘carefully edited’ report, anonymised so as to protect the guilty. The family member can demand to see the minutes of those Establishment Concern meetings, all held under the Safeguarding Adults framework. Once the family member has spent another 6 months, jumping through each and every hoop placed in their path, they may be sent anonymised and tidy minutes of those meetings.
And then the family member may realise that it is not “what is contained within the Report”, but what is “
omitted from the Report” and sometimes even concealed from the original investigator that is the important part.
The care home meanwhile will have a series of local authority and CQC inspections, monitoring progress, or the lack of progress. The care home may be prevented from admitting new residents for a 9 month period, in one particular case.
Meanwhile, the management may change; staff may change; systems will be changed; staff-training will be carried out; the GP serving the care home may be despatched; some of the staff may be placed on the POVA list. But the wider world will still be unaware of this.
The care provider will have some of their other homes inspected by the Independent Consultants, if there is concern about the possibility that other residents in other care homes may be at risk too of serious neglect. And so it goes on.
By the time the next CQC inspection report is available, a full year will have passed.
The worrying part of the whole process?
It is carried out in total secrecy. Behind closed doors.
Mark, you are often in my thoughts - and I am doing my bit too to change the revolting, repulsive system that is in place.
It will only change though if we are all involved in changing it. 
