The memory of it still makes me shudder. Some years back, I witnessed unimaginable cruelty towards some of the most vulnerable in our society, by the people who were supposed to be caring for them.
When I was a student, I spent a summer holiday working in a nursing home, where I saw elderly people, many of whom had dementia, being treated in utterly sickening ways.
Distressed residents were left tied to chairs; others were locked in their bathrooms. On one occasion, I unlocked a door to a store room to find an elderly woman on the floor, crying and covered in her own excrement.
She’d been locked in there as ‘punishment’ for disturbing the staff by pressing her buzzer.
I went to Social Services, who asked me to keep a log of everything. What happened? Yes, the owners did fire the matron and the care home was closed down — but it then reopened a few months later under a different name. And no one was arrested, no one punished.
These horrifying revelations have echoes of the Winterbourne View private hospital scandal eight years ago, in which horrendous abuse of patients with special needs was uncovered by another Panorama investigation (pictured)
I thought back to those days this week while watching Panorama’s shocking undercover footage of carers allegedly abusing people with learning disabilities at Whorlton Hall independent hospital in County Durham.
In Thursday night’s programme, staff were heard taunting, provoking and intimidating the vulnerable patients they were meant to be looking after.
These horrifying revelations have echoes of the Winterbourne View private hospital scandal eight years ago, in which horrendous abuse of patients with special needs was uncovered by another Panorama investigation.
How can this appalling behaviour be happening again? Why has the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the body supposed to be regulating these care homes, failed to put a stop to it?
A female patient at Wholrton Hall in County Durham is pictured being restrained by a care worker
Astonishingly, it has emerged the CQC inspected the privately run, NHS-funded Whorlton Hall hospital in 2017 and rated it ‘good’. It has since apologised. But that’s not good enough.
One serious problem is that the way the CQC goes about measuring performance is disastrously infected with the bureaucratic tickbox mentality so common to quangos and government departments.
Inspectors focus on easily monitored and quantifiable criteria such as how medicines are stored, infection control procedures, policies around how complaints are dealt with and how up-to-date care plans are.
Of course, these things are important. But the fact is they assess only a narrow aspect of the service that is delivered, and very often fail to address the actual quality of care at all.
The way these inspections are run, they can’t take into account whether staff are compassionate, what their attitudes are towards those they care for or whether they understand how important their job is.
Inspectors need to spend more time talking to residents and their families and even go undercover if necessary.
Another patient is pictured lying on the floor at Whorlton Hall, which was subject to a BBC Panorama investigation
Clearly, the way the CQC assess care homes needs to change. But changing the way care homes are inspected and regulated is not enough on its own. We also have to get really tough on those who perpetrate the abuse.
Ten members of staff at Whorlton Hall have been arrested and 16 suspended pending investigation.
But they shouldn’t just face disciplinary action and lose their jobs: they should feel the full force of the law. Prosecutions should be pursued in every case of abuse.
I also think there needs to be a shift in Government policy. We need a change of culture in UK care homes, and to bring this about we need strong legislation.
Nothing will change until it becomes
