abuse
This is one of the topics that makes my blood boil.
There is no excuse for abuse anywhere and if it is happening then there are
processes in place to stamp it out and get rid of the perpetrators.
It is called POVA - protection of vulnerable adults. they will investigate
anyone that is carrying out any form of abuse, and can bring criminal
charges against anyone if necessary.
Anyone that is found guilty of any abuse by them is put on the POVA
register and cannot work in care.
I have been involved in a lot of nursing homes including managing them and
will not tolerate abuse of any sort.
Hi,
It does go a lot deeper than just "not tolerating abuse" , or "stopping abuse" though. I have three pieces of advice to the question of "How do you stop abuse in a care home" before it gets to "Stooping abuse"
1. Create an ethos of care, compassion, dignity and respect.
2. Regular and rigorous prevention training for staff.
3. Regular
Mac,
Mac McKechnie
Project Manager
St Anne's Community Services
Suite S2 Evans Easyspace
Monckton Road
Wakefield
St Anne's - Making a Dfference Every Day
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Consider the environment and dont print this e-mail unless you really need to
Hi. Just like to say.
Many moons ago. POVA was changed to SOVA.... Safeguarding of vulnerable adults !!
1) Making sure the staff you employ have stringent checks!!
2) Regular training for ALL staff!!
3) If you safeguard there shouldn't be any need for protection!!!!
Sent from Shelley's Iphone
well yes slip of the letter p to s but the principle is the same...although
safeguarding does not guarantee protection - this is the case in anything.
There will always be people who will slip through the net.
There are also situations in life that change a persons circumstance, and
this is often when some people working in care are tempted to abuse their
positions, perhaps they have a partner who is ill, and they are short of
money, and succumb to the temptation of abusing their position helping
others.
We need safeguards in place but need to be vigilant too
penny green
Hi Hannot,
I think that in theory, you are initially supposed to comment about the abuse to the management, but you can also go to the Care Quality Commission, in my understanding.
Just at the moment, in the heat of the Francis report, I suspect that if you report something to the CQC, they will perhaps look at it.
However, as frequently crops up, if you work in the care home in question, your own 'popularity' might suddenly decline - one of the major issues with this, is how to protect staff who 'criticise their own bosses' from being 'bullied'.
I'm not an expert in the practicalities of this, but the sheer logic of the 'bullying' issue is easy to see, and it is well known,
Best wishes, Mike Stone
If anyone is aware of abuse actually going on in a home, the best course of action is not to try to tackle it yourself (you may render any evidence inadmissible for future legal proceedings) but to report it immediately to Social Services (and also to the police if residents' money is involved). There will be a local multi-agency safeguarding procedure which can then "immediately" be implemented, and the matter can then be investigated according to proper guidelines. I have experience of this process.
I have been a witness in an investigation regarding the institutional and psychological abuse of a resident in a care home for physically disabled adults. This included financial abuse. I am a friend of the resident and had witnessed some of the abuse myself and had seen its cumulative impact on my friend's wellbeing. He is an exceptionally articulate, highly intelligent and well-informed young man who raised his concerns clearly and through the appropriate channels, but he still could not manage to get the organisation to respond to his concerns - all his approaches to them simply resulted in further abuse and reprisals including threats of eviction. I raised concerns myself with the organisation to no avail. The abuse was being perpetrated by regional and national management staff. I supported my friend through the investigations, wrote letters to the organisation running the home and made representations to Social Services, who ran the investigation.
It took months, in fact nearer to years I would say, for the investigation to be concluded. In fact the investigation had to be done twice because after the organisation was found by a multi-agency safeguarding panel to be guilty of institutional abuse, they would not admit that they had done anything wrong and they then alleged that the investigation hadn't been done properly, so the whole investigation had to be done again from scratch, which was incredibly upsetting for my friend and frustrating for everyone else.
Social Services were not exactly perfect but they did support my friend and upheld all his concerns. After the second investigation the national care organisation running the home was unanimously found (by a multi-agency panel of safeguarding workers) to be guilty of not only institutional but also psychological abuse. This time the organisation conceded it had not been perfect but it still would not accept the findings. It had to repay significant sums of money to my friend (and to some other residents) which it had taken from them without cause.
The case was reported in the media and my friend received an apology from the organisation's new Chief Executive, who joined the organisation just as this was coming to a head and it must be said injected a welcome dash of integrity to the whole situation compared to previous staff. However, the management staff who had allowed and in some cases engineered this abuse were not dismissed.
My friend tells me that abuse of different kinds has continued within the home and he has had to raise further concerns on behalf of himself and others. He is quite exhausted with it all.
Ironically, the organisation has just released a press statement indicating its support for a ten-minute bill raised in parliament by Rt Hon Paul Burstow MP proposing greater corporate responsibility in the care sector, including criminal charges for managerial staff who allow abuse. The organisation's Chief Executive has said "If senior managers knowingly make decisions that are a substantial element in the abuse or neglect of any individual, it is right that they should face the criminal law." Her words would carry more weight if she had applied this zero-tolerance approach within her own organisation, and dismissed staff who had clearly engineered institutional and psychological abuse.
Anyway, my point is that with such rank hypocrisy at play, it was no use whatsoever raising concerns with the care home's national management team or the trustees, who simply didn't want to know and wouldn't even respond to correspondence. CQC were equally useless. The only recourse was to Social Services. They were under-resourced and it took an obscene amount of time for the organisation to be brought to book. In the meantime the resident's mental health suffered very considerably. Without the support of his family, friends, and notably a superb advocacy service which supported him throughout all this, he might not have survived the ordeal.
18/02/13
08:33 Re: abuse
Woody Whittick
Wendy, I afraid that your experience is probably all too typical - when I tried to raise an issue with my PCT, I found it very obstructive and unhelpful.
It shouldn't be like this, but it is !