Safety monitoring
Safety monitoring in care homes: time to make it mandatory
Jayne Connery, director and founder of Care Campaign for the Vulnerable, explains why she is campaigning for all care homes to use CCTV-based safety monitoring
As the daughter of a loved one with dementia, I placed my trust and confidence in a care home that failed to deliver what I thought to be even a basic level of acceptable care. My concerns were such that I resorted to placing a covert camera in my mother’s room, purely to reassure myself that my mother’s best interests were central to the care she received from staff. Regrettably, recorded images confirmed that the care received by my mother was substandard. While trying to resolve those obvious shortcomings with the provider, my mother was served with notice to leave the home. As a result, my concerns and those of other relatives were never fully addressed and I never got to know if the welfare of the other residents improved because of the issues we had raised.
The entire debacle made me wonder if
my experience and that of my mother was the exception rather than the rule. The sad thing was knowing that many vulnerable people with dementia living in care homes might not be able to let anyone know if they were distressed, mistreated, neglected, disrespected, or simply ignored. While I have since heard from hundreds of families who are deeply concerned about the care their loved one receives in a care home setting, there are also many residents with no visiting advocates who can speak up and raise concerns on their behalf. Accordingly, I started to campaign for the introduction of CCTV systems in care environments. Care Campaign for the Vulnerable (CCFTV) was created to communicate this purpose to stakeholders and to unambiguously represent those vulnerable people living in long-term care. This article discusses the vacuum that
exists in terms of continuous independent monitoring in social care, the process of inspection and regulation, and the
September 2022
www.thecarehomeenvironment.com
proposition that CCFTV is urging providers and regulators to adopt in order to properly protect vulnerable people. Had such systems been in place during the pandemic, many of the issues that families subsequently faced would either not have occurred or would have at least been fully explained. Safety monitoring would have provided much-needed assurance and comfort during a period of enforced family absence. In the five years prior to the pandemic,
over 100,000 safeguarding referrals had been investigated in the UK, at a significant cost in terms of time and manpower. Many of those investigations reached conclusions based on probability rather than direct evidence. Some will have reached no conclusion at all, given the absence of evidence or witnesses.
A shocking indictment
A 2016 poll of a public sample group confirmed that 52 per cent of people believed abuses were ‘a regular event’ in care homes – a shocking indictment. With public trust and confidence in the sector so low, it seems reasonable to conclude that safety monitoring systems ought to be implemented in the hope of promoting greater transparency, delivering certainty, and improving trust relationships between all stakeholders, whether that be families, commissioners, or regulators. We believe this would protect very vulnerable people.
It is the view of CCFTV that camera-led, consent-based monitoring systems promote safety while respecting privacy
While our campaign relates to the
aged care sector, the use of such systems could extend to the voluntary, charitable, and public sectors. Resident profiles in all settings are similar, in that many have conditions that make them vulnerable, whether that be dementia, a physical disability, or a mental health issue. In many cases, residents are either unable or unwilling to articulate their concerns and therefore require systems that will ensure they are safeguarded and protected. Families want systems that will ensure not only that their loved ones are safe, but that issues are independently reviewed and resolved accordingly. Many care homes provide services for chronic dementia sufferers. A typical profile may include a significant level of confusion, bouts of aggressive and challenging behaviour, aimless wandering, periods of despair and depression, and an inability to decide about their own welfare. Several vulnerable residents with similar profiles living together means volatile incidents can
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