Councillors slam inspection report of elderly care in Angus

Councillors in Angus have responded to a recent inspection of elderly care in the county which criticised some areas of care as ‘adequate’.

A joint inspection by the Care Inspectorate and Healthcare Improvement Scotland found the council needed to ‘address the balance of care to increase the number of people supported at home rather than in a care home through reducing the time that some service users spent in hospital when they were ready to go home.’

Inspectors also observed ‘the partnership should also provide increased access to self-directed support so that people have more of a say, choice and control’.

Now, members of the social work and health committee have now questioned the inspection process as it took place as joint-working between Angus Council and NHS Tayside was beginning and only published at a ‘very late stage’ of integration.

Speaking in The Courier newspaper, Councillor Rob Murray said the inspection timescales and procedures were ‘not up to scratch’ which ‘invalidated’ the report’s findings.

He said: “It actually devalues the comments which might have been helpful to us because the view is then taken that if they can’t get the job done in a year, then why should we put any weight on the comments they are making about our services?”

“We’ve moved on apace throughout that year, making their report that much less valuable to anybody, whatsoever.

“I would hope we can feed back that there is a great degree of incompetence on the part of the audit or the auditors and they need to seriously look at their procedures if they want to have any sort of integrity in this field.”

Councillor David May said he was “quite astonished at the way this report has been produced”, while Councillor David Fairweather branded the report “unfair”.

The inspection took place between April and June last year and involved interviews with 180 council staff as well as 70 service users and their carers across the district.

The inspection report is available here: http://cinsp.in/1BY0lYl