Real life example of balancing rights - interested in opinions

[Azureal]

I have a sister who has a severe learning disability (non-verbal, developmental age of about 15 months) and has lived very happily in a small group care home for 15+ years. Some of the staff at her home have been with her from the beginning, both male and female, and are very good with her. We as a family have never had a problem with the male staff giving her personal care and she doesn't appear to mind either. Indeed her favourite staff members are probably male.

A new person has moved into the house, also with a severe disability, and her family insist that only female staff undertake her personal care.

As a result there is a new house rule that a female staff member always has to be on overnights.

Historically it was mostly the male staff who took the overnights and many of them rely on the overtime to support their families.

The longstanding male members of staff are now thinking of leaving as they can't afford the pay drop. So the parents of the other person's right to request staff of a specific sex is negatively impacting my sister who may lose longstanding relationships with staff she is accustomed to and very close to. She is epileptic and has had 2 seizures since the change when she hadn't had any in 6 years. We are worried it's a reaction to stress as it's usually bank staff now if she wakes in the night as the female staff don't want the nights and the male staff aren't allowed.

I understand both points of view, that of the other family and of ours. But I'm worried for my sister. Would this come under sex discrimination or not? And any suggestions for resolving?

This is the key point.

Ultimately the other family has a right to single sex care and your sister has a right to care but not necessarily more than that in terms of who provides it as long as it's of an adequate standard that meets certain basis standards.

So it's not a balancing of right going on here.

There's the rights of the other disabled person and the preferred care options of your family.

One is a right and needs and the other is a want and desire.

@Gandalfatemyhamster no male carer who was good at what he did would provide unchaperoned intimate care to a female service user. No reputable service provider would permit it. Industry wide policy standards don't.

@TheCourseOfTheRiverChangedthe OP didn’t say it wasn’t chaperoned, only there wasn’t other female staff present.

A second male member of staff wouldn't be a suitable chaperone for a man doing personal care on a female service user, so if no female staff were on site, then it must have been unchaperoned.

One of the roles of a chaperone is to make the service user/patient feel more secure during an intimate examination or care to intimate areas. Two fully dressed male carers looking at my private area would be more intimidating than one man, not less.

https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2017/02/health/nursing-home-sex-abuse-investigation/

This is also relevant.

I am shocked that some posters can't see that having males doing intimate care for women who can't consent is a safeguarding failure.

And whatever CCTV or whatever OP thinks is protecting her sister will not do so, all the staff will know exactly where it does and doesn't cover, no one is going to watch it 24/7 and it's hardly going to be focussed on residents bodies when being bathed or changed.

You do realise that an anaesthetist in South America was caught on CCTV orally raping women while they were having C-sections? So while being recorded and with several medical professionals in the room? Or Dr Myles Bradbury in the UK, sexually abusing children with cancer with their parents in the room just the other side of a paper curtain? Male carers overnight unchaperoned could so, so easily abuse residents in this set up. And no , NAMALT, but some are and we should do everything to make it more difficult for the possibility to even arise.

Also many social care agencies are recruiting overseas staff, often from developing countries where there is no comparable system of criminal record checks. So there’s that.

Again. The option you are offering is to water down their request. Which means no confirmed same-sex care. Why should they?

There are non-compatible competing "needs" here.

Quite.