To think carers should be jailed

[InBedBy10]

That man who threw that poor child into the alligator enclosure is said to be severely mentally disabled. He was out with 2 carers who clearly weren't watching him when this happened. Witnesses have said they were on their phones. AIBU to say they should be charged for this incident?

To be honest this is not the first time i have heard about carers being totally negligent and getting away with it. Instead the care company they worked for was sued. Which will probably happen here. But i think its totally wrong that the people directly responsible can walk off into the sunset with no repercussions. There needs to be more liability put on people in this position.

How do you think LA are profiting from this???!! Social care costs them a fortune. LA are struggling to keep services going. There are repeated ‘restructurings’ every few years to cut yet more staff. Some LA have had to declare themselves bankrupt.

How on earth do you think they make a profit fron social care?

"AIBU to say they should be charged for this incident?"

That's what you said, it's up there in your OP.
Yes you are being unreasonable...and a gossipy, basic loudmouth. You don't need much information or encouragement to take a hard stance, do you?

Exactly. Someone who knows how the care system works. A risk assessment should have been completed before any outings occurred and whoever the decision maker was for this risk assessment and responsible for allocating these carers who should also be questioned.

Exactly! The financial pressures for LA in social care sector are horrendous

Fall risks are just one reason for 2-1 - as multiple posters have pointed out (Including me) most residential care homes require a minimum of two carers for a day or half day out.

Your example of someone home based who has care visits and who is electing to go out with their carer to the shops is not in that category of care (or they wouldn’t be living at home).

Let's wait and see.
We do need to pay carers alot better though- might attract people less likely to be on their phones, and it is a very demanding and important job.

The local authority are profiteering by cutting provisions that the learning disabled and severely learning disabled need and allocating carers and care agencies based on the cheapest bid instead of their ability to provide the correct level of care and safety that this learning disabled man needed. Just OPEN your eyes. It's nothing new that social care is not fit for purpose along with SEN and learning disabled not being supported as they need to be during their education.

Risk assessments cannot predict every possible event, and I don’t believe that if this individual was remotely thought to be capable of doing this that any member of staff would have been willing to have taken him to the zoo. Sometimes things happen that nobody would have ever predicted. Unless we go back to the days of keeping people with learning disabilities or dementia locked away from society there is always going to be risk in life. What happened was awful, and I’m sure the carers are also traumatised

The local authority don't receive any money, so they can't be profiteering.
Many local authorities are close to bankruptcy due to the costs of adult social care.
Whilst I agree with the 'home from hospital' current drive for the vast majority of people, some then need 4:1 or 5:1 care, which costs £12-15,000 a week ( I worked in adult social care 2 years ago), and in some cases there are no agencies who want to take on a client.
The LA is forced to find an option, as long term hospital places are disappearing, so care providing agencies can almost charge what they like and the LA has to agree.
However, providing 4:1 24/7 care is expensive, even on min wage. If we start to prosecute care workers UNLESS gross negligence is proven, this situation will become even worse.

I’ve been attacked numerous times during my carer the worst 2 was a small 12 year old with severe learning disabilities and 4 ft 10 old lady with dementia. I’m not 6 stone weakling.
The guidelines are to restrain a patient/client you need at least 4 ideally 5 and correct training not some e-learning rubbish, as people have died being incorrectly restrained. This is too cause minimal harm to the person being restrained and to those doing the restraint, in one place I worked it was all filmed to prevent false accusations against the staff.
I very much doubt 2 adults regardless of gender and build could have restrained this man if he was that determined to do what he did.
We know nothing about this man he may have acted in a completely uncharacteristic way, he might have had a history of aggression that was easily defused with careful communication removal from the situation and reassurance and the carers mistakenly thought he’d be fine in this situation or he might be exceedingly aggressive and his carers and the care agency looking after him didn’t give a shit.
Im sure more will be revealed with time but for people to instantly assume the carers were at fault is pretty low for people on shockingly poor wages appalling hours for the very difficult job they are doing.

It may be different in other parts of the country (I'm in the SE) but it's incredibly hard to recruit care staff here, especially in residential care (domiciliary care offers a lot more flexibility for staff).

If care staff were to be held criminally liable for the actions of those they care for, no-one in their right mind would consider the job.

Do you even know how much local authority managers, Directors of Social care departments and chief executives of local authorities get paid? Chief executive of our local authority gets paid £240,000 per year and that doesn't include bonuses. Director of adult social care gets paid between £175,000 and £185,00 per annum not including bonuses. Director of Childrens services including social care and education gets similar and each social care/education director has 2/3 deputy directors getting paid just under what the Directors get paid. Tax payers are getting ripped off by Local authorities senior management who pay themselves excessive amounts whilst pleading poverty and cutting services and the provision for the most vulnerable and learning disabled. The "financial pressures" you refer to are caused by greedy and selfish local authority senior management who profiteer from the vulnerable!!!!

LA ie taxpayers are funding the trips out for individuals who may pose a risk to the public. There should be an enquiry as to how this has happened again, after the young boy was thrown from the balcony of the Tate Modern by an autistic man.

Trips should be stopped until public safety can be guaranteed. Trips to the zoo or art gallery are a luxury, not a right. Poor poor child.

THIS.

Who's going to do a difficult min wage job if you can turn up on day 1, the person you're caring for is aggressive (particularly if it's a man - with 160% your punch power on average - and you're a women) and not only does this put you at risk you may be held liable if he harms someone else?

It's insane. If he picked up the child and threw him in the carers likely had no time to react, even if they were physically strong enough to. They almost certainly were not trained to a high standard. I have a relative in a care home and most of the new recruits have been 'trained' by a short video online, Ridiculous.

I note as PP have noted that this man did not jump in himself so perhaps he did have some sense of the risk of doing so.

If there was any history of aggression at all he should not have been in a setting like this with wild animals and small children. If he cannot understand that doing this could kill a child, he should not be at a zoo.

The poor child. I hope he physically recovers, but the trauma will stay with him for life. Well done to the woman who risked her own life to save him.

Oh I don’t disagree with you on that, I am speaking about the funding available to care managers when outsourcing care and receiving funding for those in need of extra eg one to one care. I fully understand that a lot of money goes to those at the top of the tree, and has done for many years. The majority of LA employees in the care sector are left struggling to cope with their budgets

Agreed. There are plenty of other trips where more distance can be kept, especially from children.

I'm sorry but if you don't know that a small child should not be thrown into a crocodile enclosure then I doubt you're getting any more benefit from a trip to the zoo than a walk in a field or park.

Perhaps the carer was calling the police?

If the cared-for person was a risk to others, he certainly shouldn't have been out in the community with just one carer. That's very bad practice.

we don’t know details but there is a question about possible professional negligence resulting in death.

I don't think badly trained, appallingly paid carers should be liable, but I'd be very on board with these managers being liable. Ultimately, accountability should stop with these very highly paid people in charge.

The argument after all is that they deserve these salaries for the responsibility they carry but if there are no consequences to cutting frontline funding to bone in order to give themselves ever higher salaries, there is no responsibility or accountability.

Who’s dead?

I'm torn.

Obviously they should have been doing their jobs BUT having worked in that field I'd question how much training they had received and whether they were the man's usual carers/ how much information on him they'd been provided with. I think an investigation will show whether they should be held accountable or the company.

I think incidences like this show why caring careers should be better paid and better trained.

It is not acceptable or reasonable that Directors of adult and children's social care in local authorities get paid MORE of tax payers money than the Prime Minister of the UK gets. The chief executive of local authorities, some of which are small boroughs, get paid 2 1/2 times more than the UK prime minister gets paid. It is this diversion of funds to local authority senior management that has left the learning disabled, vulnerable and elderly so neglected.

As a parent of a learning disabled person I can tell you that the days of having regular or usual carers are long again even when it is stated in the care plan that the person needs consistentcy and regular carers. The needs of the learning disabled are just regularly ignored as being unimpressed.

So neglected and at risk and often, very often, harmed as well as - in this case - members of the public including children. It's criminal really or should be. These managers are paid far too much and then there is no accountability when they fuck up. There needs to be accountability and there needs to be the possibility of criminal charges when things like this happen and expose flaws in the system they're managing that mean there is an ongoing risk of things like this happening.

I meant The needs of the learning disabled are just regularly ignored as unimportant.