Members may be interested in the following statement
.The Relatives & Residents Association (R&RA) is calling for a complete review of the Care Quality Commission, the body which regulates care homes for older people, following the shocking expose on BBC’s Panorama.
The charity’s chair, Judy Downey, has written to the Secretary of State for Health calling for an immediate increase to the frequency of inspections and a complete overhaul in the way they are conducted.
The charity also wants to see a regulator which listens to, and deals appropriately with, individual complaints.
Said Ms Downey “We cannot go on watching the same mistakes being repeated over and over, the government HAS to do something now. We’ve seen evidence, reports from the Health Select Committee, the Public Accounts Committee, the Audit Commission and the Capability Review by the Department of Health all saying the same thing – that CQC is not effectively regulating care homes. At what point is the government going to accept that the regulator is not fit for purpose?”
BBC1’s Panorama shows the shocking treatment meted out to 80-year-old Maria Worroll, a resident at Ash Court Care Centre, a nursing home for older people. Footage, obtained from a hidden camera placed in Mrs Worroll’s room by her concerned daughter, revealed a nurse slapping and treating the dementia sufferer so roughly she cried out in pain.
In a further catalogue of breaches, footage showed four other carers speaking amongst themselves - never once addressing the elderly woman - and restraining her arms whilst feeding her. Five care workers have been dismissed with one of them, the nurse, being sentenced to eighteen months in prison.
The abuse took place in a care home which had previously been given an excellent rating by the Care Quality Commission. In a report published after the victim’s daughter’s had raised the alarm the home was judged as ‘meeting all the essential standards of quality and safety’. Mrs Worroll’s daughter, Jane, had neither been consulted nor interviewed by the inspectors and, as far as the charity is aware, they did not seek to view the damning footage she had secured.
Continued Ms Downey, “We’re appalled that CQC, in their intelligence gathering of this case, didn’t consider it necessary to consult with the key person. The elderly victim in this scenario had done nothing to antagonize her carers and yet not one but five people were shown to have behaved so disgracefully that it resulted in their dismissal with one of them being imprisoned. Alarm bells should have been jangling very loudly at CQC about the culture of this establishment. We just can’t understand the superficial way they appear to have dealt with this case."
“We have lost total faith not just in the frequency of care home inspections but the manner, too, in which they are carried out. The changes we have seen to regulation in the last five years are putting older people more at risk than they’ve ever been in the last twenty five years. We’re going backwards”.
The charity is calling for a minimum of twice yearly inspections to be reinstated in care homes with at least one of them being unannounced and conducted in way which ensures that evidence is properly gathered and scrutinized.
Additionally, they want the regulator to take responsibility for responding to serious complaints about care and conditions in care homes. The charity will be seeking further meetings with the Secretary of State and the regulator as a matter of urgency