5,000 complaints a month over care home abuse fears
By STEVE DOUGHTY
Last updated at 00:24am on 5th May 2008
Families worried that elderly relatives are suffering abuse in care homes are making 5,000 complaints a month.
The rate of calls to social workers by concerned children or friends suggests high levels of mistreatment may be hidden behind the care home doors.
The figures were released by the Government's care home watchdog, which is to publish a guide for families this week to help them choose the best homes for frail or vulnerable elderly parents or other relatives.
The Commission for Social Care Inspection itself received 1,043 calls in the six months ending in March, which involved 506 homes and agencies providing staff.
Council chiefs estimate that their social services departments are receiving 60,000 calls a year from families worried that their relatives are being abused.
That means that more than one in ten care home residents is the subject of a complaint by a family member.
Complaints are not recorded nationally, so the estimate does not provide any indication of how many of the 14,600 care homes in England have been the subject of complaints.
The figures come amid growing concern that some care homes permit routine mistreatment and abuse of residents by their staff.
The commission reported last year that in some homes elderly people are tied down, locked in rooms, barricaded in corners or restrained in bed by a system of knotted blankets known as a 'cocoon'.
It said there was violence - for example residents being pulled by the hair - and that elderly people are punished for shouting by being refused food, or help to go to the toilet.
The commission says that one in 20 of all care homes has been condemned by inspectors as unsafe.
Abridged
SOURCE: DailyMail
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