Elder Abuse and Adult Protection
By CEO at Action on Elder Abuse
18 October 2010
This week will probably be the most immediately momentous for quite some time, as the implications of the Comprehensive Spending Review begin to sink in and then take effect. The Government is giving out very clear messages that the impact will be spread over at least four years and let’s hope that this proves to be the case.
In particular Local Government needs to hold its collective nerve and not make rash decisions about care services or about adult safeguarding services. There are just too many people in very vulnerable situations that can be badly hurt by any short term or knee-jerk reactions to what is announced on Wednesday, so Council responses need to be measured and perhaps different from previous years. Certainly, we would be a little bit more reassured if ADASS had been prepared to give a public commitment to maintaining adult protection/safeguarding, but they did not respond to our calls in this regard and it would seem that their new rallying call these days is around ‘affordability’.
Now, dare we wonder who could possibly consider stopping elder abuse to be unaffordable? Is there a community in the UK who would really agree that abuse of old people, or other adults, should continue because councillors have decided that there is something else more important to spend the money upon? And this is essentially what it will come down to. Whether people choose to argue that, ultimately, it is all the fault of George Osborne and the Coalition Government for making cuts, the reality is that the pain, the suffering, and the final accountability will rest at local level. Some may argue that this is unfair, but it is nevertheless the reality of life!
Which perhaps brings me to what has been happening since the beginning of October. A callous daughter stole £60,000 from her frail mother’s bank account and blew the lot on luxury holidays around the world as the Alzheimer’s suffer lay dying in a care home. A 30-year-old care worker was accused of stealing £10,000 from one of the residents at Hagan Hall sheltered complex in Jarrow and £2,000 from another. She got 10 months' imprisonment, suspended for two years, with supervision and 250 hours' unpaid work. Another carer elsewhere was convicted of stealing £700. A Care home project manager from Birmingham “plundered” more than £6,000 from a vulnerable woman in her care but escaped going to jail, while another was jailed for stealing £7500 from three elderly residents. However, the retired bank manager who swindled more than £47,000 from a vulnerable care home resident got two years probation and was ordered to repay the money within nine months. And that’s just this month. So far!
But perhaps the worst report was on 6 October when the Northampton Serious Case Review report confirmed that five elderly people who died within two weeks of each other at a care home in the county suffered "severe neglect". They were aged from 83 to 100, and died between 22 July and 6 August 2009. The case review found standards at the home had declined since previous inspections and that, by July 2009, the home "simply could not manage". The home was rated "adequate" in November 2008, and was due to be inspected again within a year, but CSCI was alerted in July by Northampton General Hospital.
In particular Local Government needs to hold its collective nerve and not make rash decisions about care services or about adult safeguarding services. There are just too many people in very vulnerable situations that can be badly hurt by any short term or knee-jerk reactions to what is announced on Wednesday, so Council responses need to be measured and perhaps different from previous years. Certainly, we would be a little bit more reassured if ADASS had been prepared to give a public commitment to maintaining adult protection/safeguarding, but they did not respond to our calls in this regard and it would seem that their new rallying call these days is around ‘affordability’.
Now, dare we wonder who could possibly consider stopping elder abuse to be unaffordable? Is there a community in the UK who would really agree that abuse of old people, or other adults, should continue because councillors have decided that there is something else more important to spend the money upon? And this is essentially what it will come down to. Whether people choose to argue that, ultimately, it is all the fault of George Osborne and the Coalition Government for making cuts, the reality is that the pain, the suffering, and the final accountability will rest at local level. Some may argue that this is unfair, but it is nevertheless the reality of life!
Which perhaps brings me to what has been happening since the beginning of October. A callous daughter stole £60,000 from her frail mother’s bank account and blew the lot on luxury holidays around the world as the Alzheimer’s suffer lay dying in a care home. A 30-year-old care worker was accused of stealing £10,000 from one of the residents at Hagan Hall sheltered complex in Jarrow and £2,000 from another. She got 10 months' imprisonment, suspended for two years, with supervision and 250 hours' unpaid work. Another carer elsewhere was convicted of stealing £700. A Care home project manager from Birmingham “plundered” more than £6,000 from a vulnerable woman in her care but escaped going to jail, while another was jailed for stealing £7500 from three elderly residents. However, the retired bank manager who swindled more than £47,000 from a vulnerable care home resident got two years probation and was ordered to repay the money within nine months. And that’s just this month. So far!
But perhaps the worst report was on 6 October when the Northampton Serious Case Review report confirmed that five elderly people who died within two weeks of each other at a care home in the county suffered "severe neglect". They were aged from 83 to 100, and died between 22 July and 6 August 2009. The case review found standards at the home had declined since previous inspections and that, by July 2009, the home "simply could not manage". The home was rated "adequate" in November 2008, and was due to be inspected again within a year, but CSCI was alerted in July by Northampton General Hospital.
Abridged
SOURCE: Elder Abuse Adult Protection
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