to think it is acceptable to smack someone if they touch your body, even if they have dementia?

[haleey]

I visit my grandad in a care home regularly and sometimes male residents will touch women unexpectedly. I’ve had my waist touched, boobs grabbed and one man touched my privates while smiling at me. I know they are ill and confused, but honestly I think people act as though women are supposed to just tolerate it because “they can’t help it”.

Part of this for me is that I have been assaulted before, so my reflex when someone suddenly touches me unexpectedly is to hit out before I even properly think. It is an automatic panic response.

Recently one resident suddenly grabbed me and I instinctively smacked his hand away. One of the staff immediately told me off and said “he can’t help it”. I understand that dementia affects behaviour and judgement, but I found it upsetting that the focus instantly became about him rather than acknowledging that I had just been touched without consent and panicked.

I’m not talking about beating vulnerable elderly people or deliberately hurting confused residents. But I also don’t think women should be expected to quietly accept unwanted touching because the person is elderly or cognitively impaired.

Then clearly it's either not an automatic response, or no vulnerable people have touched you in a way that sets it off. You can't have an instinctive triggered reaction that you only deploy having first assessed whether or not the stranger touching you is vulnerable in some way. That's an oxymoron.

There is something seriously wrong with that care home. Multiple residents showing sexual disinhibition make me wonder is there something wrong with prescriptions policy. Visitors repeatedly being put at risk of assault suggests bad management of the physical space and of the safeguarding of residents and visitors alike. Frequent staff turnover suggests those bad practices are also harming them.

OP, I'm glad you are putting in an official complaint,

I never said everyone was victim blaming.

Is it about who has more rights?

No, vulnerable people have not set it off (despite many sexually inappropriate touching incidents), because I also have an instinct to protect frail vulnerable people. Including to not hit them.

The residents have the right to not be smacked in their own home

Many? Is this in your job, or just randomly in life? And it sounds as though you know those people are vulnerable beforehand, if you're saying you have the instinct to protect frail, vulnerable people.

Ultimately though, not everyone has the same sort of trauma responses as you. We all react differently - and sometimes we can't even predict how we'll react, or whether we'll be triggered at all.

Your instinctive response is able to detect someone who is vulnerable and then your instinct adjusts itself?

You don't need instinct to know that people who live in residential aged care are vulnerable.

Female staff have told me they are also harmed by men. For those who keep saying women harm too, yes they do but in my grandads care home the women are being harmed by men.

Interestingly none of the staff or the managers have ever said I was wrong to smack them as a reflex when the male residents touched me.

I am talking about your amazing instinctive response that is able to detect people who are vulnerable.

In my job.
And yes absolutely people have different trauma responses. But if i knew that my trauma response could put vulnerable people in danger, then I would modify the environment to minimise this risk (ie visit in a different area, or go out for visits).

You're not making any sense.

You have persistently gone on about victim blaming.

I don't believe your instinct to swat their hand away is unreasonable as it would be classed as a self defense response and the force used by you was not disproportionate to the perceived threat. But if we are talking about smacking then yes that is assault as it not proportionate to the response. If a staff member smacked a patient as part of a trauma response then they would be strongly disciplined if not sacked.

Well we are talking about rights in that the residents have more of a right to the communal areas than you do as a visitor. If it was your relative that was groping people without capacity then you would be unhappy with him being shut in his room every time a visitor came round. The whole point of care homes etc is that they act in the best interests of the patients first and foremost.

The carers who helped to look after my father in his last two years (in our own home) were always glad he wasn't a 'toucher', and had other clients they were alarmed by. Euphemisms ahoy in that sentence, you can supply the details.

At the least men with that problem should have either male personal carers or women carers who work in pairs. For their own protection, as well. And they should not be wandering publicly accessible areas of the care home. Do other visitors bring children with them?

Your instinctive response able to detect vulnerable people makes no sense.

If my relative was a groper without capacity I'd want them kept safe and if they couldn't be supervised then being kept away from the public is the next best thing.

Yes people do bring children. I have seen families visiting.

I do wonder about the children.

In their home they have more rights. If they are in your home you have more rights, so as an example of you don't like something they say or do you have the right to tell them to leave.

And they should not be wandering publicly accessible areas of the care home.

It’s their home that they’re probably paying a four figure sum every week to live in, no part of which is publicly accessible - these places are like Fort Knox. Their wandering shouldn’t be a problem. If they’re known to behave inappropriately visitors are perfectly able to keep out of their way.

Yes but this is their home which is away from the public. I absolutely agree the care home should be supervising it better but if OP declines to meet their relative in a private area then she isn't helping the issue. These people don't have capacity so aren't criminals and are already deprived of their liberty living in such a facility.

A complaint to CQC sounds like the right path to address these safeguarding concerns for staff, other patients and visitors alike.

In a properly run dementia care setting rights are constrained. People can't come and go beyond the defined safe zone without an approved escort. Visitors are signed in and out. Residents may wear tags so that their location can be tracked. They are medicated with substances they don't understand. The numbers of people in units, and the staff to resident ratio is managed.

In this place that does not seem to have been happening.

As @BIossomtoes said:

If they’re known to behave inappropriately visitors are perfectly able to keep out of their way.

Bloody hell, OP. I'd say to that staff member: 'I can't help it either. It's a reflex action against being sexually assaulted.' Do not apologise for defending your body against aggressive or perverted men, demented or otherwise.

Can you ask to see your grandad in a room alone?

It being their home isn't going to be much consolation if they grab the breast of a visiting teenage girl and their brick shithouse dad slugs them for it.

I have several times said that the OP is describing a chaotic and badly run nursing home which is failing to safeguard both residents and visitors. A number of pps have advised the OP to whom she should report this nursing home but she hasn’t responded to them. Nor, it has to be said, does she seem to be concerned at all about the welfare of her grandfather in this home.