Dementia as a marketing ploy – abuse or not?

What would  you do if you became aware that someone who claims to have a diagnosis of dementia is being used and abused by a ‘company’ that claims to be involved in the care industry?

That someone may well have mental health and other issues to deal with, and without wishing to disrespect them at all, they are well aware that they are being used.

That someone knows exactly what is going on but they are unwilling to listen to any advice or comment that comes their way.  It’s not in their own best interests to do so.

However, it is in the best interests of  their own quest for fame and glory.  So they are unlikely to question the advances that have been made to them, all in the very best marketing interests of a ‘company’ that has absolutely no previous history (apart from a few failed attempts), no track record, that changes its website almost daily to reflect its latest ‘acceptable face’, but still a ‘company’ that has absolutely nothing to do with the care industry.  In spite of the way it allows itself to be described.  In fact, it describes almost every aspect of itself on its website incorrectly, misleadingly and with abominable cunning.

A ‘company’, that is, that has absolutely no right to use the word ‘care’ in its online description of itself, let alone to encourage vulnerable people to support their misleading claims and to perpetuate the misleading descriptions of itself.  Globally now!!!!  A ‘company’ that loves the word ‘global’ and encourages its prey to use the same word.

A ‘company’ that made the first and every subsequent approach to the vulnerable adult and managed to persuade him to go along with their plan.   All in the best marketing interests of the ‘company’ trying to devise a present and a future for itself, and also in the best interests of a vulnerable adult who cannot resist attention, flattery and support in his quest for fame.

A ‘company’ that fails, time and time again, to correct any of the information being circulated by their found prey.

A ‘company’ that encourages the vulnerable adult to continue to promote it, albeit via incorrect information sources.  All that information remains uncorrected by the vulture.

What would you do, in the face of such vicious abuse of a vulnerable adult who may – or may not – be living with a diagnosis of dementia?

All replies will be received with thanks, and will be considered in depth,

HOT Care in the UK

The Francis Report calls for a ‘legal duty of candour’.  He mentioned honesty, transparency and openness too.

He may well have stolen my term for exactly the same kind of care that he’s calling for.

HOT Care.

I’ve been calling for HOT care for more than 7  years now.  As have those affected directly by the Stafford Hospital.  Cure the NHS.  Cure the Care too.

HONEST +  OPEN + TRANSPARENT = HOT

I first used the acronym HOT in my correspondence with Islington Local Authority’s Mental Health Care of Older People team, circa 2005 and many times thereafter.  I’ve called for that same HOT Care in each of my communications with Care UK since 2007 when my relative suffered at the hands of such cold care courtesy of Care UK.

Could we now find a way to move towards HOT Care in the UK?

Is it so impossible for us to expect/demand/require HOT Care?

Care in the UK – 5 years on – Part 5

The day of your funeral arrived.   It took place late on a cold and dark January afternoon.  It was always destined to be a quiet occasion because you had outlived most of your relatives and friends, so it was to be just a small family affair.  The Service was elegant and personal, with a sprinkling of your good humour and more than a dash of our family history.

Your unexpected and sudden admission to hospital and death there had caused us enormous pain.  We knew by now that there would be a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding your admission to hospital within 10 days of arriving in the care home.  We had hoped to have the time and space for our last farewells to you at the funeral.  We were not even allowed that.  Care UK chose to intrude again in death as it had done in your life.

The Service ended and we followed the Minister out of the Chapel, only to see two people sat right at the back.  The care home manager and another person had chosen to invite themselves to your funeral.  Representing the care home Lennox House and the care provider Care UK  that had failed to care for you.

One of your family had already told the manager that she would not receive a warm welcome at the funeral, so it was disturbing to see that she chose to ignore that advice and that request not to attend.  The Minister spent quite some time talking with us all before he departed, as we stood outside, almost in the darkness, looking at the floral tributes.  Strange though it seemed at the time and strange though it still seems to us, the care home manager went to her car to get her mobile phone and took photographs of some of the flowers that had been designed to reflect part of  your origins.  You’ll know the images I’m talking about here.

Little did we realise though that her motivation for attending your funeral went far beyond the usual reasons for attending a funeral, albeit uninvited and unwelcome.

You remember that ‘Complaints Form’ that I mentioned here before?  The one that allegedly came into being on 31.12.2007 when we chanced to bump into the manager at Lennox House.  Well, after the funeral service  the manager must have driven at speed back to the office, where she signed off the Complaints Form at 18:00 hours, with the words “Resolved” and making references to things that were allegedly said at the funeral.  The form indicates that no further investigation would be required by Care UK as the complaint had been ‘resolved’.  Wrong, wrong and wrong again.

The same Complaints Form made reference to things that she could not possibly have known then, because even we didn’t know then some of the things mentioned on this form and we were the first to know them, later.  Nobody else knew these facts then when the Complaints Form is supposed to have been created and completed.  Contemporaneous?  I doubt it.

But we didn’t know about all of this until July 2008.

Almost her parting words as she left the cemetery, the manager said again “We’ve taken steps to ensure that this kind of thing never happens to anybody else”.  The same words she’d used twice before and said to me on 31.12.2007.    They resemble those oft-used but empty words “lessons have been learned”.  Except that the lessons are never learned well enough to ensure that this never happens again.

I wanted to say to her that – while I could appreciate the benefits others would undoubtedly derive from those steps – they  are steps that should have been taken long before you arrived in that care home.  They’re the most basic elements of care, fundamental to a place that calls itself a ‘care home’.   The elementary fundamentals of care.  Without them being firmly in place, nobody has the right to use the words ‘care home’.

The Investigation would take its course, I said, so we should wait for that before making any comments on it all.  It was a funeral, after all, so everyone was polite, as you would expect of us.  We didn’t know then that there would be two Investigations, both of which revealed much of the same, but with one revealing far more than the other,  including many of the most basic lessons that needed still to be learned.

You only had one chance in that care home.

You deserved better care.

(To be continued)

Care in the UK – 5 years on – Part 4

The next days were spent making arrangements for your funeral. 

I began to follow up some of the questions I’d already asked in mid-December 2007 of the Mental Health Care of Older People Team, part of Camden and Islington NHS / Mental Health and Social Care Trust.  Their social worker wrote to me the day before the funeral to inform me that she’d no longer be the allocated worker, but that her Deputy Manager would be coordinating the “on-going enquiry” into the circumstances leading to your admission to hospital. There was to be a comprehensive investigation under their Adult Protection Procedures.  I asked to be allowed to attend all meetings and to receive a copy of the Report of the Investigation.  The Deputy Manager of the MHCOP team said she didn’t envisage any problems with that request; she knew by then that I’d want and need to stay fully involved.

I’d contacted CSCI (now the CQC) on 20 December 2007, while you were still alive,  to tell them of my concerns about your care, or rather lack of it.  It took them a while to find the right department dealing with Lennox House.  CSCI had not been notified of your sudden admission to hospital on 8 December 2007,  so the inspector I spoke to said they would write to the manager of Lennox House and to me.  I heard nothing back from CSCI, so I phoned them again on 21 January 2008,  to be told that CSCI had indeed written to the manager after my phone call and that they’d received a call back from her to say that she would reply in due course. 

But CSCI  received no response from her, so they contacted her again on 21 January 2008.  That’s when I first discovered that the manager told CSCI, that very day,  that she had ‘arranged’ a meeting with me on 31 December 2007 (as I mentioned here) and that all my ‘concerns had been ironed out’ at that so-called meeting.  That is far from the truth.

Your social worker had a few busy days too, round about 20/21.12.2007, and when I received a copy of your notes (much later in February 2008) I was able to know more.  According to the notes, she’d apparently tried to phone me so many times but had never been able to reach me or to leave a message for me.  Strangely enough, many other people had managed to do just that.  I knew nothing of Adult Protection Procedures or the ‘Form AP2’ that was completed then.  Islington’s Adult Protection Coordinator was busy too, but I did manage to speak with her just the once. 

When I received your notes, sent to me on 12 February 2008, I read that the Adult Protection Coordinator had advised your social worker on 2 January 2008 – well before the funeral – that your family had the right “to request an inquest, though MHCOP would not do this”.    (They are the exact words used in the social worker’s notes.)

Why is it, do you think, that absolutely nobody at all cared enough to pass that vital piece of information to your family?  Not one person told us that we had the right “to request an inquest, though MHCOP would not do this”.  

MHCOP (Mental Health Care of Older People) were well aware that there were serious concerns about the lack of care provided to you by Care UK’s so-called care home Lennox House. 

But nobody cared enough about you or your family to tell us that we had that basic human right.  There were a few other things noted that they could have transmitted to your family too, but nobody cared enough to tell us.  In the best interests of whom was that decision made to withhold vital information from us?

According to the notes, MCHOP were faffing around trying to work out whether there was anybody available in MHCOP with the ‘capacity to conduct an investigation’.  Not wishing to be facetious, but I do wonder whether they meant the ‘mental capacity’ or the ‘physical capacity’ to conduct an investigation.  In the event, an Independent Nurse Consultant was commissioned by MHCOP to carry out the investigation and to write a Report.

The social worker signed off on 8 January 2008 and departed by writing that she would no longer be involved in your case as “the only remaining work is the completion of the POVA enquiry”.  POVA was the Protection of Vulnerable Adults.

You deserved better care.

(To be continued)

 

 

Care in the UK – 5 years on – Part 3

This day five years ago, 31 December 2007, was a difficult one for many reasons.  I know that you won’t wish me to go into the detail of some of those reasons here.

We drove to London again and spent 4 hours at the Whittington Hospital dealing with various formalities. Most of the morning we spent in the PALS office (Patient Advice and Liaison Service) and talking on the phone with the Coroner’s Office and with one of the hospital doctors involved in your care.  We grabbed a coffee and  left at about 1 o’clock, having decided that we did not want to have to return to that part of London again in the near future.

That’s why we went – on the spur of the moment, unplanned and unannounced – to Lennox House to collect your belongings and avoid the need to go back there again.  While you were still alive, just, I’d already asked the manager to send me a copy of everything on your records.   On 20 December 2007 I received a copy of a document that Care UK calls the ‘Daily Record’ .  It was only 9 pages so I asked the manager to copy and send everything else.  It was the only document I’d seen then, but it gave a good indication of the very days when you must have been desperate for help, but no indication of any help being given.

We parked the car and were able to walk straight into Lennox House.  So much for security.  The manager was at reception, but she didn’t recognise us.  She’d only met us once before,  back in August 2007 when we went on a recce to Lennox House, just one of the care homes we looked at.  There was no reason she should have recognised us.  I introduced myself and explained that we’d come to collect your belongings.  She said she’d just been speaking with your niece on the phone and she was planning to collect your things.  It was easier for us to do it there and then, as that niece doesn’t drive.  She also said that she was just writing a note to me, to accompany the paperwork I had asked for.  I said I’d take it all with me and save her the trouble of posting it.

We went to your room, and packed your things; a few were missing, especially two rings.  I asked for them – but I was assured you had not had any rings on your fingers when you arrived in Lennox House.  It was an uncomfortable thing to hear, because we ‘d bought one of those rings, the ruby ring, for your 80th birthday.  The sapphire and diamond ring had been on your finger for the last 60 years –  more years than I care to remember.  I’d noticed you were wearing both rings when we last saw you there, in November.  Eventually, the staff managed to come up with one of the rings.  The other one never surfaced.

We went down to reception.  I was asked to go into the manager’s office, while “His Lordship” as you always called him took your things to the car, before returning.  In that office, I was subjected to an inquisition.  I was expected to go through every single line of the Daily Record and explain my concerns to the manager, as she wrote alterations on the pages.  I thought I’d already done that on the phone earlier in December, but I still had to go through it all again.  It became impossible for me, and I left the office in tears saying I just couldn’t go on with it.  We had spent 4 hours at the Whittington Hospital, and I was exhausted.

I told the manager much of what we’d been through when you were in hospital, including being asked to explain how your diabetes was so out of control.  I’d already spoken with the GP who hadn’t bothered to look at the meds you were taking, when she’d been called to the home, and who told me she was not aware that you were a diabetic.  If she had been given a list of the meds you were taking it would have been obvious to her that you were a diabetic.  If one of the nurses had told the GP you were a diabetic, she might have treated you differently.   (She’d never met you before, as you were new to the care home and new to the surgery providing services to that care home.)  Interestingly, it was only from that Daily Record that I discovered the GP had spoken with Lennox House (on 14 December 2007, while you were in hospital) before she returned my call to her that day.

The manager told me that there were no available glucose strips in that home,  because the GP does not prescribe them.  The manager told me that Care UK wouldn’t provide them either.  To say that I was shocked, again, would be an understatement.  I volunteered to pay for a year’s supply so that no other person with diabetes would ever arrive in A&E in a diabetic coma, like you did.  With much of your bloods and tests ‘deranged’ .

I’m still trying to work out why those same words about glucose strips being unavailable are written in your care home notes, in the Daily Record for 7 December 2007.  It’s such a strange few lines to have been added to someone’s personal care record.  After all, you weren’t the only resident with diabetes, so  it strikes me as a very strange addition to your records.  Contemporaneous?  I doubt it.

The manager said “we have taken steps to make sure this never happens again”.

That was too late for you.  You only had one chance.

What I didn’t know until much later (namely July 2008)  was that a ‘Complaints Form’ came into being on this day, five years ago.  Its purpose was to indicate that ‘a meeting had been arranged’ to discuss my concerns, all of which appear to have been resolved that very day.  I learned from CSCI (Commission for Social Care Inspection) that a ‘meeting had been arranged’ this day, 5 years ago, to discuss my concerns.   It must be the first ‘meeting’ where people stood to ‘discuss’, rather than sat comfortably.   CSCI asked for a copy of the minutes of that meeting.  CSCI is now the CQC (Care Quality Commission).  There were no minutes – because it was not a meeting.  It was a chance encounter.   (More about this all another time.)

I left Lennox House in tears.  This day 5 years ago.

You deserved better care.

(To be continued)

Care in the UK over two weeks in December 2012

1 December 2012: TENS of thousands of vulnerable people are being physically and mentally abused by the very people meant to be caring for them. Disturbing figures reveal that 130,000 adults were ill treated – usually at the hands of carers or family. Abuse most often took place in their own home or care home.  Read more here.

1 December 2012: Abuse of elderly patients by NHS staff rises by a third in one year with a  shocking 36,000 offences reported last year alone.  Read more here.

1 December 2012: Care home regulation criticised by Norman Lamb.  Regulation of the care sector is not fit for purpose, care minister Norman Lamb has said as he unveiled proposals on English care homes for consultation. He also said there was a “significant lack of corporate accountability for the quality of care”. One suggested measure involves companies having to open up their books to inspectors to ensure they are financially sound. Read more here.

1 December 2012: Care home companies could be forced to open books to prevent another ‘Southern Cross’ collapse.  Read more here.

4 December 2012: Care home job advertisements ‘encouraging’ criminals to apply.  Convicted criminals have been encouraged to apply for jobs in care homes looking after frail, elderly people.  Read more here.

4 December 2012: Ann Clwyd, Labour MP tells of inhumane treatment and says she fears normalisation of cruelty now rife among NHS nurses.  Ann Clwyd has said her biggest regret is that she didn’t “stand in the hospital corridor and scream” in protest at the “almost callous lack of care” with which nurses treated her husband as he lay dying in the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff.  Read more here.

4 December 2012: Melton Court care home to be closed by Friday. The manager of a South Yorkshire care home, which has been ordered to close by Friday, says she is in talks with two potential new providers. The 21 residents at Melton Court in Maltby have to find new homes, after it emerged the owner is in prison. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) revoked Ishtiaq Zahir’s licence and said the home is operating illegally.  Read more here.

5 December 2012: A PENSIONER with Alzheimer’s died after she plunged down a lift shaft when the door was left unsecured, a court heard yesterday. Annfield Plain company faces health and safety charges after tragedy.   Read more here.

5 December 2012: Wrexham – Concerns over care at mental health hospital.  Read more here.

6 December 2012: Leicester – Dementia sufferer ‘left in agony’ at George Hythe House care home in Beaumont Leys, court hears.  An 89-year-old dementia sufferer was left in agony for four hours with a broken thigh  because a care home supervisor could not be bothered to assess her, a   jury heard. Sarah Bewley was “too busy” doing paperwork to see the woman after she suffered a fall, despite several requests from a care assistant, it was claimed.  Read more here.  See below.

7 December 2012: Regulator moves closer to setting up ‘negative register’ of adult care staff.   If the proposals are approved by government, a national code of conduct would be applied to workforce and the HCPC would consider serious complaints made about individual professionals; any decisions to uphold a complaint would be made public, as would the resulting sanction.

A “negative register” would be maintained of those found unfit to practise.  Read more here.

7 December 2012:  Leicester – Jury clears Leicester care home boss of neglect charge.  After the not guilty verdict was announced, Judge Lynn Tayton QC said: “This case raises very worrying issues, particularly concerning systems that seemed to be in place which created a situation in which no-one took responsibility for the care of this lady.  “She was left in severe and unnecessary pain for a number of hours.”I hope those in charge of the home have looked at the systems and the staff training.” Read more here.

7 December 2012:   Chorley, Lancs – A care-home worker and her husband who subjected  their children to years of horrific abuse were facing jail yesterday after being  convicted of cruelty.  Read more here.

8 December 2012: Wolverhampton – An investigation has been launched into safeguarding at a care home, which helps people with mental health, drugs and alcohol problems.  Read more here.

8 December 2012: Derby – A national health watchdog has issued a damning report on a privately-run Derby care home.  The Care Quality Commission has told the company  that owns Cleeve Villas Nursing Home, in Wilson Street, to do more to protect the safety and welfare of residents – or face legal action.  Among the problems identified were:

• No organised stock control system of medicines
• Failure of staff to update crucial medical documents
• Care plans reviews not completed on time
• Failure to ensure prescribed medicines were always available
• Medicine doses not being documented, meaning it was unclear whether medications had been administered
• No appropriate systems in place for the safe disposal of medicines when they were no longer required.

Read more here.

Read the CQC report on Cleeve Villas here.

That list of failures is just the kind of thing most people don’t know about, so  awareness raised to the top is what we need in the world of care.

When it comes to the comment made by the spokeswoman for Cleeve Villas Care Services : “As a dedicated provider of care services, we at Cleeve Villas have taken on board the suggestions from CQC as to how to enhance our overall performance and have already taken steps working with a specialist healthcare consultancy to address these.”Our aim as always is to ensure the individual and complex needs of our residents are met.”

I don’t believe you.  Yet.  This is not the first CQC detailing same/similar problems.   What has taken you so long to show that you care enough to provide good quality care?

9 December 2012: Vulnerable care home residents are treated like “brutes or malfunctioning machines”, said Hilary Mantel, the author, as she spoke of the “utterly depressing” search to find accommodation for a disabled friend.  Read more here.

10 December 2012:  We haven’t a clue how much a care home will cost us.  The vexed question of how we pay for the care needs of Britain’s ageing population rears its ugly head so often that it is no wonder everyone thinks it is a pain in the neck.  Read more here.

10 December 2012: Star ratings: Families need reliable information on care home performance.  Read more here.

10 December 2012: Preventative care for elderly under threat.  Services have been cut or frozen by two-thirds of local councils since coalition came to power, according to ComRes study.  Read more here.

10 December 2012: A Birmingham care home is being investigated by council and health bosses amid  allegations of neglect.  Bramley Court Care Home, in School Road, Yardley Wood, is facing the probe  after a complaint was made about the standard of care given to elderly  residents. New admissions have been suspended while a joint investigation is carried out  by the city council and NHS Birmingham and Solihull.  It is not the first time the home has been in the spotlight over its  treatment of residents. In August a report by watchdog, the Care Quality Commission, found residents  were being put at risk of not receiving adequate food and drink.  Read more here.

10 December 2012: Winterbourne View scandal prompts new care guidelinesReport warns that care sector risks slipping back into institutional culture typified by Victorian asylum system.

The report warns that, elsewhere, staffing cuts caused by reduced fees paid to care providers are causing residents to be left alone for hours at a time and are fostering excessive reliance on use of drugs and on physical restraint, “often for minor perceived misdemeanours”.

Brendan Sarsfield, Family Mosaic’s chief executive, said: “We would argue that if providers don’t believe this has ever happened in their services, it just may be that they haven’t looked hard enough.  Read more here.

10 December 2012: Care home provider Family Mosaic has warned that the care sector is in danger of slipping back into the institutional ways of the past and is urging care providers “not to be complacent” and be vigilant for danger signs of abuse.  Read more here.

10 December 2012: Winterbourne View scandal: Government rethinks use of hospitals.  Norman Lamb said “”We need to have a situation where people who run care organisations – public or private sector or voluntary – know that they are accountable for the services they provide and there are consequences if they don’t.”  You can’t argue with that so let’s home he brings about accountability.  Read more here.

12 December 2012: Copthorne, Sussex – Care home boss suspended over death of patient.  A care home manager has been suspended by the Nursing and Midwifery Council over allegations she shredded a document to cover up a mistake which led to the death of a resident. The resident of  Orchid View care home in Copthorne was given three times the prescribed dosage of Warfarin, a drug used to prevent blood clots, over 17 days in 2010. Read more here.

12 December 2012: Stockton care home boss denies a catalogue of failures.  Meal times at the home were “appallingly organised” and 15 out of 17 patients  lost weight over a one-month period, the Nursing and Midwifery Council heard.  Read more here.

12 December 2012: York care home warned to make urgent improvements.  The Care Quality Commission has issued a formal warning to Mimosa Healthcare (No 4) Limited, which is the registered provider of Birchlands Care Home, that they are failing to protect the safety and welfare of the people using the service.  Read more here.

12 December 2012: Wall Heath care home told to shape up or face enforcement action.  The Care Quality Commision (CQC) is demanding an improvement in the standards of care at Holbeche House after inspectors found failings during an unannounced visit in October.  The Wolverhampton Road home, which is run by Four Seasons (Bamford) Limited, was found to be below standards for the care and welfare of service users and assessing and monitoring the quality of services.  Andrea Gordon, deputy director of operations (central region) for CQC, said: “The law says these are the standards that everyone should be able to expect. Providers have a duty to ensure they are compliant.  Read more here.

12 December 2012: Nurse at Rodborough care home slept with vulnerable female patient and invited another to swingers’ parties. Trevor Rice, a senior triage mental health nurse at Park House Mental Health Resource Centre, was formally removed from his post by a Nursing and Midwifery Council disciplinary committee on November 23.   Read more here.

12 December 2012: A bungling nurse who was cleared to work in Sussex despite making a number of shocking errors is being investigated for a second time.   Nicanor Sindanum made national headlines after he was allowed to continue to work as a nurse despite being found guilty of 17 serious errors by a nursing panel while working in Scotland.   In June this year a nine-month banning order imposed by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) in September 2011 was revoked and replaced with conditions of practice order.  This meant that, despite his failings, Sindanum was allowed to start work for an Eastbourne care home so long as he told bosses that he had restrictions placed on him. But now it has emerged that Sindanum faces a second investigation for alleged failings dating from 2009.  Read more here.

13 December 2012: Slyne-with-Hest, Lancashire – Four people have been charged with offences under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 following a police investigation into the mistreatment of residents at a care home in Slyne.  Read more here.

13 December 2012: Wales – More should be done to reduce Wales’ reliance on using care homes as a way to look after older people, says a group of Assembly Members.  The assembly’s health committee has backed moves to help people keep their independence for as long as possible. Families need simple and accessible information about the options available for elderly relatives, it said. It pointed out that many elderly people who pay for their own care were unaware of the help available to them.  Read more here.

13 December 202: Panshanger, Welwyn, Herts -Massive arrogance’ jibe as ‘out of scale’ care home plans thrown out.  Read more here.

13 December 2012: Morpeth, Northumberland – Coroner hits out at care of woman in Morpeth home.  Mr Brown, recording a narrative verdict, yesterday concluded the fall “did  play a part” in Mrs McEwan’s death as the fractured femur caused immobility  which made her more susceptible to the fatal complaint. The coroner also found three serious failures in the care of Mrs McEwan.

He ruled senior carer Stephanie Wilson had left Mrs McEwan’s bed in an  elevated position, moments before she fell while trying to get into it.

Furthermore, Mr Brown said staff had failed by phoning a doctor’s surgery  instead of an ambulance after the fall, even though Mrs McEwan was in obvious  pain and in need of such care immediately.

Finally, the coroner said workers had been wrong to lift Mrs McEwan back on  the bed, saying they should have left her where she was comfortable until the  ambulance arrived.

Mr Brown nevertheless accepted that staff had been misguided and in need of  better training rather than motivated by malice.  Read more here.

13 December 2012: Croydon  – Are Croydon care homes up to the job of looking after borough’s most vulnerable?  Nearly a third of care homes in the south of the borough are failing patients and residents in one or more key standard, an Advertiser investigation has found.

Campaigners for better care say the findings paint a “dire” picture for sick and elderly people at a time when savings in care provision are set to be enforced.

Among those that are failing in one or more key standard are homes which charge elderly people up to £800 a week.

Stuart Routledge, chief executive of Age UK Croydon, said: “It is appalling that any nursing home should fail to protect the dignity and respect of their patients and residents.

“This survey underpins the urgency for social care funding reform so that those older people who struggle daily with chronic ill health, frailty and disability have the peace of mind that they will be well cared for at their time of need.

“In particular, this shows the dire consequences of a social care system that has been under increasing financial pressure over the last eight years and in many areas is now financially stripped to the bone.

“Staff across health and care services have a professional and moral duty to make sure the dignity of their patients and residents is enshrined in every action. This means involving people in decisions about their care, providing care that treats people with respect and helping people to be as independent possible.”

Read more here.

Nadine Dorries & her super-inflated ego

I haven’t been bothered to keep up with Nadine Dorries and her antics until now.  Partly because I don’t often watch that programme.

I’ve heard the rubbish that she has occasionally spouted, and I’ve read the rubbish she’s reported as having spouted.

All I can say is Get Her Out of Here.

She appears to me to be just another self-centred, fame-seeking, super-inflated egotistical mind-numbingly boring person who does not deserve to be supported by the Public Purse.

 

Jeremy Hunt – how dare you?

Is someone having a laugh at the expense of the electorate?

Is this whole coalition government having laugh after laugh at the expense of the electorate?

Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt is allegedly the recently appointed Secretary of State for Health.  He has now opened his big mouth and spat out words that he should have swallowed long ago.  Does he not have a way of engaging his brain before opening his mouth?

Hunt has declared that he would favour a change in the law to halve the limit on abortions from 24 weeks into a pregnancy to 12.  Read all about it here.  He’s entitled to his own opinion, of course, but he should keep it to himself until there is a clear need for him to open his mouth and speak.  Why speak out days before the Conservative Party Conference?  There must be a reason somewhere – but I doubt it.

He’s a joke.  He was a joke as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.  He was a joke when it came to fiddling his expenses, fiddling his tax liability to the tune of £100,000.  He was accused by a fellow MP of lying to Parliament.  What an upright, upstanding and healthy career he’s not had.

His greatest achievement so far is a failed attempt to export marmalade to Japan.    Amongst other failed attempts to run a business .

He is an abomination now.

Anagrams come to my aid:

Jeremy Hunt = The jury men

Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt =  Shhh!  Tyrannic majesty murderer

I feel better now.

Why I despise the so-called system of care for vulnerable people

I’ve been fairly controlled over recent weeks, months or even years.  I suppose I’ve been waiting and hoping for a chink of light to emerge, for a culture change to emerge, for a way forward to emerge in the so-called system of care that we have allowed to be in place.

However, I am reaching screaming point.  Hardly surprising.  When someone is destroyed because of absent systems of protection, and when it then takes almost 5 years to work your way through to a full understanding of why the so-callled system of care for vulnerable people fails to provide decent care so very often – that’s when you reach screaming point.

Time and time again, the CQC comes up with yet another report as it did today, with a report into the ‘care’ afforded to people with learning disabilities.  Or rather the lack of  care.  I’ve read it all, but there’s not much hope for real change.

Week and month after week and month, our government comes up with …… not one single plan to improve things.

Year after year, the same old same old same old gets published in the press, reported on radio, featured on TV.

Still nothing changes, so I need to scream now.  It won’t change anything – but it may just help me to scream.

[Next section of this particular blog post: Deleted temporarily pending the return of sense to the world of care.]

Therewith, I will leave this one for today.  But not for long.

To care or not to care?

Imagine the 83-year old person in the following story was your own relative.

The article is here : Islington Gazette – dated 10 February 2012 – a few extracts below:

‘The Nursing and Midwifery Council’s (NMC) Conduct and Competence Panel is investigating five nurses’ care and treatment of an 83-year-old woman who died after spending around 10 days 
at Lennox House Nursing Home in Durham Road, Islington.

The panel heard this week that the elderly woman was taken to Accident and Emergency at Whittington Hospital in a diabetic coma on December 8, 2007. She died on December 27.

It is alleged that several serious signs of deterioration in the two days leading up to her hospital admission weren’t acted on.

These included agitation and a tendency to lay on the floor – symptoms which retired nurse Sue Bradell-Smith, who carried out the investigation of Lennox House in 2008, said were abnormal and would have made her “very worried”.

Other allegations include a failure to monitor the patient’s condition and diabetes, failing to create a pain management plan and feeding the patient fluids orally although her swallowing difficulties were known.

According to the home’s records, by the evening of December 8 she was suffering with continuous muscle spasms and had dysphasia, an inability to speak – yet it is claimed that the emergency services weren’t called straight away.

NMC’s solicitor John Lucarotti said the treatment provided fell far below what is expected of a nurse.’

How would you feel if you are now being required to understand alleged facts that are totally new to you – almost four-and-a-half years after the death of your relative?

You are now being given to understand that the care home manager was in the building all day long, right through from 8.30 am to 8 pm in the evening – but couldn’t be bothered to get off her backside to attend to one 83- year old in desperate need of care and attention.

You are now being given to understand that a nurse came to see the manager and told her that the 83-year old was not well.  Still the manager did nothing.

You are now being given to understand that nobody involved considers that the care they provided was poor.

You are now being given to understand that the manager didn’t react or even care much when the nurse told her the 83-year old was in spasm, unable to speak, unable to swallow.

Can you imagine how you would be feeling now?