TO POINT OUT...PANORAMA (TUES) Worse ever secret filming of abuse of vulnerable people.

[ScousyFogarty]

This was the most tragic ever "secret filming" by Panorama of abuse on vulnerable patients in care home. (arrests now made of some staff)

Did any of you manage to sit through the programme? It was an ordeal just to watch

I have a foster sister with Downs and believe my i know she has been mistreated physically and mentally and had her belongings trashed/stolen, in the end she landed up in a psych unit for 15m because of it all. The sad thing is she refuses to talk, always has done.

mothersnacker - sorry to disagree with you, but I have this problem with MN as a whole. the complacency, hypocracy, naiivity is scary

a lot of the problems happen in the home. maybe most of them

we should be looking closer to home maybe

I'm still shocked that no other agency did anything - surely social workers, doctors, local authority, CHC Assessing Nurses are in and out of this place on daily/weekly basis and not always with appointments to go in and see the patients. Or did they also report this?

And if the ladies arm was broken while being restrained surely a safeguarding case would/should have been raised

Grand failure on every level but unless people stand up and do something then nothing will ever get resolved.

re meds

I suppose I was thinking more of home carers...this is where alot of medication blunders seems to happen. In care homes it does seem to generally run better with mars sheets etc

Now the administration of PRN is another hot topic in care homes and I've seen some shocking over usage. Also the prescription of anti-psychotics by psychiatrists is another area that needs a serious overhaul

the whole system is shot

but then in the midst there are wonderful homes and excellent carers who follow regualtions and best practice guidance, they donhave any more money than any other establishement yet manage it - so my frustration si that it must be possible!

I was in a children's hospital thirty years ago, at a time when regulation was less stringent, and many families believed 'the professionals are always right'. I am not surprised at the programme's content, I am sure this kind of abuse is far more common than one would suppose. I am horrified it still goes on in 2011 ... very sad

I am a manager of carers

last week I was in a disiplinary, the carer had taken the kid to the fair, spent the £5 out of pocket on an ice cream and a go on the 'fish the duck' at a fair

except it never happened. she took him home(to her house) and pocketed the money.

At the disciplinary I was sidelined. the carer is mates with the owner, and does bank for the local hospital, where the owner has a hand in.

grrrrrr.

The care plans lay out the care that is legally required, so its all down to supervision of those carrying out the care plans. If a home is residentail only, then there will not always be a nurse to take charge. Managers now only need an NVQ level 5, at one time it had to be a experienced nurse that held a licence for a home.

Old - You do find that they are all in each others pockets, so all these 'procedures' mean very little.

oh yes. but I got panned last night, for pointing out the sanctimonious attitudes prevalent here.

nobody likes a whistleblower eh ?

I have been and known so many people forced out after whistleblowing, i had to leave as it was clear that i was about to be 'set up' and was studing for a SW degree at the time.

I would love to see the books of this care home to see how much of the £3.5k (think that is what was quoted last night) per resident per week is actually spent on their care. I can't shake the nagging feeling that someone was getting rich whilst spending the minimum on staff and resources.

BTW, I am not for one moment saying that being poorly paid was any excuse for the horrific behaviour of the 'staff'.

I am just so disgusted that none of the relevant authorities were thorough enough to realise there was a problem. The whole system is messed up.

I don,t think it is a matter of qualifications. Harold Shipman was well qualified. I think the issue is that there are individuals who get their kicks by having power over someone else and these individuals whether they have an NVQ, a degree or caring experience from their family situation have to be screened out

Absolutely disgusting. Words are not enough.

FWIW I believe that every single member of staff who witnessed the abuse and did nothign should also have been named and shamed. In my opinion they are just as bad.

I worked in residential child care for a long time and the bottom line is, if you witness something inappropriate and do nothing, you are just as guilty as the perpetrator!!

Completely sickened by the whole thing. As a parent of a disabled child, it was very close to home to me for what could potentially be an issue for my son when I am no longer alive and kicking on his behalf!

I have been reading this thread and I simply cannot get my head around all the comments - undervalued work, traditionaly womens work, hence low paid, minimum wages etc etc.... and £3500 per week !!!
Am I missing something??

Yeah sweetgrapes you are missing the fact that the £3500 a week goes to running the home with a bulk to shareholders. The minimum left goes on staff - minimum wage often for the unqualified carers.

sweetgrapes it is low paid and minimum wage, I only used to get £6.30 ph a couple of years back, my friend who works currently with adults with lD only gets £6.50 ph even antisocial hours too which is a pittance.

You don't abuse someone because you are on a low wage.

You abuse someone because you are pathetic enough to need to get a kick from torturing vulnerable people, you are not being supervised or trained properly, you are the wrong person for the job and you have some sort of anger management/mental health problems yourself.

Very well said Bakelite

bakelitebelle i completely agree how much carers get paid is irrelevant compassion doesn't cost anything!

you'll still find the same kind of costs though for some LA, NHS or not for profit organisations as you do for organisations such as Castlebeck.....£3500 a week is at the higher end but I've known it to be more depending on the type of care required.

some authorities will pay around £400 a week for an elderly person with no nursing care needs (depending on the area).....now that doesnt go very far.

Whereas a supported living placement for somebody with LD and other complex needs would be around £1700-2000 a week depending on the area.

and yes some carers just shouldnt be carers

My foster sister's care cost £2500 pw and in our experience 'council' care was worse given the factor of unskilled staff with minimal experience/training.

Her current home is better but there are always issues as the care is never at the standard you'd want.

What i find hard is the staff are still there and i find that very hard to stomach, i feel for the people there who are trapped.

The procedures often don't work in regard to staff with concerns or family members with concerns in the main which is very sad and scary.

Be warned, the care system is something we all need to be fighting for, not just people like me who are parents of severely disabled children.

Our parents and ourselves and our children after us may need care as we get older or have acquired disabilities and a lot of it doesn't seem to be great. I don't know what the answer is, but perhaps we need to be thinking radically (in a good way, not in a eugenicist way) about where we go from here.

The current trend for sticking our heads in the sand and crying 'seize the day' as if tomorrow doesn't exist, is tempting but won't help our children when we are not here to help them

When I watched the Panorama programme I was struck by the complete lack of structure of the resident's lives.

This lack obviously led to complete boredom in the carers. The kind of activities they indulged in reminded me of the kind of behaviour I have witnessed in low ability secondary students. Where play-fighting and bullying were indulged in just to pass the time.

I find it easy to imagine that many of those students placed in such an unstructured setting of endless boredom would behave in exactly that way.

These vigorous young people seemed to be expected to spend their days like the elderly sat in front of endless TV. It is no wonder that this cruel, abusive behaviour develops.

The wages are irrelevant. I watched this programme, horrified. It wasn't that they couldn't be bothered to do a good job, more that the staff went out of their way to be cruel and wicked. They persecuted those young people, it wasn't the absence of care but that they didn't even think they were human.

I would imagine that the family members of those in the home could have a good case to sue for damages for their children.

People all go on about training blah blah, only a very wicked person thinks it's Ok to stand on a persons hand, or throw water on them or put them into a shower fully clothed in the night. When they were crying with fear and still no-one stepped in to say 'stop that's wrong'. God I despair, no-one was prepared to help them and when a nurse raised concerns no-one listened.

They all deserve to go to prison for a very long time, sadly I bet it won't be long enough.