United Kingdom:Half care homes fail drug safety test

back

United Kingdom:

Half Care Homes Fail Drug Safety Test

by David Batty, the Guardian

January 22, 2004

More than half of older people's care homes fail to safely administer drugs to residents, the regulatory body for care homes told a parliamentary inquiry today.

The national care standards commission (NCSC), which regulates residential and domiciliary care in England , said only 45% of care homes for older people in England met official standards for administering medication.

In a written submission to the Commons health select committee's inquiry into elder abuse, the NCSC said that more than 10% - 1,278 - of the complaints it received from the public last year concerned abuse of the elderly. A further 3,583 complaints - about 28% of the total - were received about poor standards of practice.

The commission said its inspectors had uncovered many forms of abuse and neglect, from the deliberate to the unintentional. During last summer's heatwave inspectors visited a care home where two elderly residents were admitted to hospital with exhaustion and dehydration because the central heating could not be turned down.

The chairwoman of the NCSC, Anne Parker, called for a campaign to raise public awareness of elder abuse.

She said: "The single most important way to tackle elder abuse is to raise awareness of the way that older people should be treated by society as a whole, and the standards of care and behaviour to which they are entitled.

"A clearer understanding about what standards of care older people should expect, and are entitled to, will help tackle the problem of unintentional abuse and ensure that abusive behaviour is more likely to be challenged."

At the first session of the select committee inquiry in December, the charity Action on Elder Abuse accused the commission of repeatedly failing to investigate the abuse of older people or take action against perpetrators.

Ms Parker admitted there was still much work to be done, but said the NCSC, which will be replaced by the commission for social care inspection in April, had made a "concerted effort" to tackle elder abuse.

The commission for healthcare inspection (Chi) told the health select committee that many older people were still not treated with dignity and not given privacy on mixed-sex wards in hospital.

In a written submission to the inquiry, Chi's acting chief executive, Jocelyn Cornwell, said elderly women were nursed alongside young male patients in several mental health trusts.

The commission has mounted three investigations into "serious service failures" involving the care of older people at Manchester mental health and social care trust, Gosport war memorial hospital and North Lakeland NHS trust.

It found that care services were compromised by poor leadership, inadequate communication among staff, major organisational change, and poor clinical governance, including a lack of performance monitoring.

The inquiry will also hear evidence today from the general social care council, which regulates social care staff, the community care minister, Stephen Ladyman, the national director of older people's services, Professor Ian Philp, and Raymond Warburton, head of elder abuse and social care access at the Department of Health.