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.

It depends on whether they were on their phones idly scrolling, or working. Most of the care plans and ongoing documentation are online.

I think the phone issue is the distractor here. We don't even know if they were, this is all heresay and surely anyone involved in giving statements to the police should not be writing on social media. I have seen some comments and the ones I have seen are generally about seeing the man and carers around the site. So maybe they weren't even on their phones.

I am a PA for disabled people and I will do a mental risk assessment every time I take my clients anywhere. These carers should have done the same and if this young man had form for aggression at all he should never have been around young children.

I am dismayed with the lack of proper care in this country. A few years ago I was out with one of my clients and we popped into a supermarket cafe for a drink. At the table next to us sat a severely disabled man with his carer. She plonked a plate of chips in front of him and then totally ignored him whilst she ate her own lunch, scrolling on her phone the entire time, the poor man was really struggling to eat, she paid him no attention. I'm sorry to say that I couldn't bite my tongue and had to say something to her.

It also pisses me off when people believe caring to be an easy job. I started a thread last year about my 17 year old dd, how she was struggling to find work after being at college. The amount of people telling me she should try applying for care work because there are always jobs in this sector shows how unaware people are.

It takes a special kind of person to be a great carer as this sad story shows it to be the case. Sad also because a person with disabilities whether physical, mental or both deserves to have access to a good life too and now, at no fault of his own this young man will most probably end up in some secure unit somewhere and that poor little bot and his parents will be traumatised for many years to come.

The problem with services meant to protect those with learning disabilities and MH problems is that they are often inaccessible to those who need them. During my career I can’t tell you how many people I came across who ended up in the criminal justice system and were inappropriately jailed because they had fallen through the supposed net of support.

This seems very reasonable.

Genuine risk assessments, well trained staff and plenty of safer places to visit.

Riskier venues could even do mornings specifically for severe learning disabled adults who need multiple adult carers on occasion.

But generally in the social care industry the risk assessment is carried out by those in a higher position than the actual carers who are then tasked with following it. You can’t hold carers responsible for the mistakes of their ‘superiors’.

I agree with you about the general level of awareness of what goes on in the care industry. It took my mum being allocated home care via the local authority before I realised how bad things were. The carers were mostly straight from school or working through uni and they had no intention of making a career of caring - it was a stepping stone to somewhere else, and it showed in the quality - or lack of it - in the care provided.

First caveat - WE DONT KNOW WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED YET..

But assuming things happened the way you think..
Instead the care company they worked for was sued
Why shouldn't they be, if it turned out they were in some way liable? They might not have done risk assessments. Or they might and then have sent him out with people who were not trained or qualified.

We're not low paid or poorly trained. We have to have qualifications and can make a decent wage with experience
Good for you.
I live opposite a large house that was recently bought by a private Care provider. It's for assisted living for people with severe learning, mental or physical disability. They spent months doing it up with en suites, appropriate shared spaces etc all brand new and gorgeous (spoke many times to the building crew and also the management of the care company, who were there often. People started moving in. I thought it looked like a lovely place and did momentarily think maybe it would be a nice place to work and a satisfying and worthwhile job (was looking to step back from my business and do something I thought might be worthwhile). So I went on their website - all very professional and their other properties all looked fabulous too. There were vacancies for care workers for the house that had just been refurbished opposite me. They talked a good game about how they valued their staff etc. No previous experience necessary - they trained on the job. Great for me as I'd never done that kind of work before.

There was also a job for an admin assistant - I was over qualified for that and frankly didn't want more office based work.

The (basically, junior) admin assistant job paid three pounds an hour MORE than the jobs for the carers, which were minimum wage. Yeah. No. That's how much they 'valued' their care staff. Immediately changed my mind about this 'lovely caring' company.

I've since noticed one of the men, who is about 6ft 5 (comparing to my DH who is about 6ft 3 and very heftily built, has two carers when he goes out. It's usually the same two, both slightly built women probably not much over 5ft (shorter than me at 5ft 5 anyway). I have no idea of what his care needs are, but should he have any kind of random episode - or even if he needed physical assistance - I can't see how either one of them could do much about it. And that would not be their fault.

I cannot fathom the arrogance of some people. You weren't there, you don't have access to any of the evidence that the Police will be compiling to establish exactly what happened and how it happened, you know absolutely nothing about the actions, motivations or circumstances of the people involved and yet you feel qualified to declare that they should be in jail! Not even that they should be questioned or investigated....jailed.

What's more disturbing is that the poll currently says 60% agree with you. Based on no facts whatsoever. Just blind outrage and mob mentality.

Whoever these two carers are, I wouldn't be surprised if at least one of them took their own life since social media and the court of public opinion has already decided that they are guilty and deserve to rot in jail despite there being absolutely no evidence of wrongdoing on their part whatsoever.

They should be charged with criminal negligence.

Im sick and tired of seeing carers on their phones everywhere I go. It should be a sackable offence.
In nursing homes, out and about. I work in the NHS and I never check my phone at work.
They are being paid to work not doom scroll.

This is a 30 year-old man. We’ve got no idea whether the carers are male or female.
Do you reckon you could stop a 30 year-old man? I worked in a public safety role and I started in the June and we received training on how to keep ourselves safe. Never mind the general public in the January.
This was for a government department
That’s how much they value the public safety

True
But how often does something like this happen
We had the incident at the Tate and now this one
So that's a not a huge amount of incidents to warrant stopping everyone with LD from a bit of freedom.
Although if I was the parent of either child ,I'd definitely feel differently

I don’t think there needs to be jail time every time something terrible happens, sometimes it is just a case of unfortunate incidents, accidents or misjudgments where I don’t think punishing anyone will help. If carers aren’t doing the current job properly, then they need to look at why. It’s a low wage, if they want to raise the expectations then they’re going to have to make the job more attractive. I wouldn’t go for a low wage job with such high risks personally. Having carers at greater risk of jail time isn’t the answer to having a higher quality of care, it will just create less people being willing to take on such a job.

Yes, I would blame the carers.

I would also dish out prison sentences to the people on parole boards, if they released rapists and murderers that re offended!

Before any sort of investigation has taken place?

Do you work for the CPS? Do you have intimate knowledge of the threshold for criminal charges in negligence cases, and have you personally seen evidence that these two individuals would meet that theshold? If not then you are talking rubbish.

I'm not sure jailing minimum wage care workers for something as extreme and unpredictable as this is going to improve things the way you think/hope it will.

Even amongst much higher paid and educated health workers and doctors all this type of action achieves is incredibly risk adverse practice which then strangles an already broken system.

Social care already has a recruitment and retention problem, nobody will work with the more difficult clients and anyone who posses the slightest risk won't be taken out of the house again. Why would they risk it for less than £13 an hour.

You are quite right but a cool calm approach with common sense and facts is so boring for keyboard warriors isn't it?
You might be considered a 'fun sponge'.

The carers are working to a care plan and risk assessment decided by others. Why would they be to blame for an arrangement that was clearly a disaster waiting to happen ?

Can you explain how you work in the NHS and yet seem completely unaware that within social care, most care plans are online, as is documentation for care given ? The carers were likely not ‘doom scrolling’ but documenting care, as the LA carers who provided my mum’s home care, had to do regularly. They were also fielding calls from the care agency throughout mum’s allotted care times. There will be online evidence in search histories as to what this man’s’ carers were actually doing at the time. All we can do is wait for that before we pass judgement.

If you routinely undertake Risk Assessments as part of your job then you will know that the purpose of RA isn't to completely eliminate all risk (because that's almost never achievable) and that something going wrong does not necessarily mean that a risk assessment wasn't adequate.
By its nature, risk assessment focuses on risks that can reasonably be anticipated at the time. It is impossible to predict every potential scenario, human action, environmental factor, or unforeseen event. Even where comprehensive safeguarding measures are implemented, some residual risk will always remain. We have no idea whether this man's actions were in any way foreseeable, because we know nothing about his history or his presenting behaviours. For all we know he could have been taken to that same attraction many times without incident.

This.

I think your post actually demonstrates the need for high quality secure residential care.

I used to work with someone who had worked with people in institutions and then in care in the community. Her firm opinion was that the institutions ( she had worked in) were better for many. She said they had large and pleasant grounds, that people there could vocalize and express their behaviours freely without inhibition or judgement. And that once moved to the community some were much more unhappy. She had clients who had become terrified to leave their small flats because they were tormented by locals when they did. Many of the properties they live in are not in pleasant areas. It did give me pause for thought about whether care in the community was better for everyone.

I also interviewed one woman with LD who was moved to ‘independent living’ in the community who sat and rocked during the whole interview repeating ‘I am so lonely. I am so lonely’ .

If he required expensive two to one care, it was known he was a risk.

So you think that if they were being neglectful they should just be fired and that’s the end of that? Just because they work in jobs that have a high rate of attrition?

I think that’s not fair in any way. It would mean that anyone working in such kind of jobs would be effectively get a „free pass“.