How Many Of Scotland’s Old Folk Are Being Neglected?

ALARM bells should have been ringing as soon as Bucksburn Nursing Home told Emma Wyness they had a place for her frail grandfather, she said.

“The manager told me somebody had died that morning, so they had a room,” says the 30-year-old.

The mother-of-two had visited nearly 40 nursing homes in the North-east in search of a place of care for Ronnie Beutelmann, but had been turned away from every one for lack of beds.

A few weeks after her grandfather was admitted in February last year, Ms Wyness began noticing signs of neglect.

“Alarm buzzers, which residents used if they wanted to go to the toilet, had been pulled out of walls. I used to go into Ronnie’s room and find him lying in his own faeces and urine.

“They used to leave food for him, but he had difficulty eating as he had Parkinson’s disease, was blind in his right eye and partially blind in his left eye. He lost 1.7 stones in 13 days because he hadn’t been getting food.”

The 81-year-old former prisoner of war was “left abandoned” at the £680-a-week home, which is run by Focus Care Centres, with a seat restraint around his chest for four hours. Ms

Wyness, from Blackburn, near Aberdeen, also claims he was verbally abused by staff.

The family asked the Care Commission to investigate Mr Beutelmann’s plight and the regulatory body upheld four of their six complaints. Focus Care last night declined to comment.

Mr Beutelmann was moved to another home in January and died a few weeks later.

His story reflects problems that are affecting the whole elderly care home sector, which looks after 38,000 vulnerable people in Scotland, most of whom are in privately-owned, publicly-funded homes.

The Care Commission has told The Scotsman that insufficient resources – in particular a lack of well-trained, motivated staff – allied to inadequate vetting of new employees and a lack of political leadership is leaving many old people with a poor quality of care, something that has been evidenced by a string of abuse cases in recent months.

Liz Norton, the commission’s director of adult services, said: “Caring for older people is something that should be valued more than it is. Tesco pays more to its staff than care homes do.”

Only about one-third of the 42,000 staff working in care homes are fully-qualified nurses. Many of the rest are unqualified care assistants who are paid the minimum wage of £5.35 an hour.

Ms Norton said it is “hardly surprising” that standards of care are often lacking.

Her concerns are supported by new research, seen by The Scotsman, which shows the number of abuse complaints upheld against old people’s care homes last year reached 56, a rise of about two-thirds on the previous year. A further 24 complaints about the use of restraint were upheld, as were 237 complaints about communication. Many of these, Ms Norton says, will also involve a degree of abuse.

She says the rise in complaints reflects a growing awareness among residents and families of unacceptable practice, rather than worsening standards of care, but admits the figures represent “the tip of the iceberg”.

Age Concern Scotland says more than 10,000 elderly people last year suffered neglect, while many others suffered physical, sexual, mental and financial abuse.

The government, along with the Care Commission and its sister body, the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC), have taken steps to address the issues. A new extended system of disclosure will from next year alert employers to disciplinary action taken against “job-hopping” staff. The Care Commission is also about to employ a consultant nurse to enhance training.

By April 2009, every care home worker will be required to register with the SSSC. A proportion of care staff in each home will also have to be trained to a recognised care standard.

But the relative lack of screening of foreign workers seeking employment in care homes is a “national scandal”, according to Ms Norton.

The vast majority of them perform an excellent job, she says, but adds: “To care for people well, you need to care about them. If you don’t identify with people in a cultural sense, it makes it harder to care about them.”

Ms Norton praised the SNP government for prioritising dementia issues, but bemoans an overall lack of political leadership on elderly concerns. There should, she says, be a minister for the elderly and a department dedicated to social care.

Robert Deeming, vice-chairman of Scottish Care, which represents private care home providers, said: “We cannot pay out more than we take in. As soon as we put staff through training, which we are required to do, they go off to health boards or councils because they get higher pay.”

The Scottish Executive has commenced an independent review, chaired by Lord Sutherland, to investigate the level and distribution of resources to local authorities for elderly care, while also bringing elderly services under a single department.

A spokeswoman said: “Older people’s services are one of the key parts of the minister for public health’s role and improving care for older people is a priority for the Scottish government.”

Ms Norton said: “There’s a societal issue about what we are prepared to pay for older people.

“It’s the mark of a civilised society that it cares for old people in a particular way, and people in Scotland are generally very positive and proud of free personal and nursing care. But I think people would be prepared to pay more if they knew the real situation.”{mospagebreak}

Helpless victims get justice as uncaring nurses face prison

A SERIES of abuse and neglect cases involving elderly care homes have been exposed in recent months.

• A care worker who took a photograph of an elderly patient’s private parts was last week told she faced jail.

Mandy Polson, 23, photographed the 91-year-old man in the toilet of the nursing home where she worked.

Polson’s solicitor told Falkirk Sheriff Court said his client had worked in the care industry for more than a year but was no longer employed in the industry, “for obvious reasons”.

• Jane Blackwood was earlier this month jailed for 25 months after using her position to steal thousands of pounds of belongings from dying pensioners.

Ayr Sheriff Court heard the 36-year-old care home worker rifled through the drawers in vulnerable OAPs’ rooms while working at a Baptist Church-run home in Victoria Park, Ayr.

Blackwood’s victims at Airlie House included elderly residents who were suffering from terminal cancer, strokes and dementia.

• A Filipino nurse was jailed for 15 months in May after tormenting dementia sufferers at a care home.

Jefferey Ednalan, 34, was convicted of a catalogue of abuse including stuffing a deodorant can in the mouth of a 95-year-old man to stop him shouting and two counts of indecent assault.

Ednalan denied all of the charges at Edinburgh Sheriff Court and insisted his fellow workers at the Colinton Care Home had made up the allegations out of jealousy.

• A former nurse who admitted tampering with panic alarms at a Scottish care home escaped a jail sentence in March. John Cruickshank disconnected emergency alarms at Grove Nursing Home in Kemnay, Aberdeenshire, where he was a staff nurse.

On one occasion, a 95-year-old dementia sufferer was left lying on a toilet floor with a broken thigh bone following a seizure. But the woman could not raise the alarm because her buzzer had been disconnected.

• Kerry Smith abused her position as a senior manager at Glenhelenbank Residential Home to steal money from a 79-year-old female pensioner who was battling cancer.

Smith, 27, pleaded guilty in March this year to obtaining £1,670 from Jessie Richardson from the home in Luncarty, Perthshire.

She was charged with stealing £12,000 from Ms Richardson and was sentenced 240 hours’ community service.{mospagebreak}

Attitudes still need changing

COMMENT by Anne Ferguson

WE WOULD all like to think that when we grow old and are less able to look after ourselves that we will be treated with respect; will have access to good quality care; have our rights respected; and be supported to have as fulfilling a life as possible.

We possibly aspire to a future where being old will be a positive life stage and a lifetime of experience and acquired knowledge will be valued. You have to question, however, how well that matches the experience of today’s older people and the reality of what will most likely happen to us in the future.

Research published recently tells us that more than 10,000 older people in Scotland experienced neglect in the past year and that many more experienced physical, psychological, financial and sexual abuse. The shocking truth is that, until recently, no-one in Scotland was even talking about this phenomenon, far less doing anything about it. Surely this says something about how we value older people and how we see their role within society.

New legislation, which puts Scotland ahead of the rest of the UK in terms of safeguarding vulnerable adults, will do much to empower social workers and other professionals to get involved and support victims of neglect and mistreatment.

But we have still not tackled underlying ageist attitudes or made sufficient progress with how older people are cared for.

Following changes throughout the 1990s, many more older people now live at home, supported by a range of domiciliary services, and that is to be commended.

But how much choice do they then have about when they get up and go to bed? How many live on reheated frozen meals seven days a week because they have no-one to cook fresh food for them? How many have become prisoners in their own homes because they are unable to get to do the things they enjoy doing? When this treatment of older people is accepted as inevitable and unavoidable, does this not just push up tolerance levels of other types of mistreatment and neglect? And at what point do we say: ‘No more?’

• Ann Ferguson is elder abuse projects co-ordinator for Age Concern Scotland.

FROM CRADLE TO GRAVE – THE RISING COST OF CARING FOR SCOTLAND’S AGEING POPULATION

SCOTLAND will face a mounting care bill as the country’s population ages dramatically over the next few decades.

There are currently about 985,000 pensioners in Scotland, but that figure will soar to more than 1.3 million by 2031.

About 38,000 people, or 4 per cent of Scotland’s elderly population, are currently in a care home.

If that proportion remains constant, then in 25 years from now an additional 12,000 care home places will have to be found.

Nearly half a billion pounds of public money was spent on care homes for older people in 2005-06.

That figure will soar by several hundred million pounds a year as Scotland’s population ages over the next two decades.

A report for the Scottish Executive, Fair Care for Older People, estimated that the total cost of long-term care in Scotland would double between 2003 and 2022, reaching £2.4 billion.

Meanwhile, the cost of free personal care last year rose £90 million to £237 million, with the number of people receiving fully subsidised care at home passing the 50,000 mark for the first time.

John Swinburne, leader of the Scottish Senior Citizens Unity Party, called for a revolution in elderly care, including a massive increase in spending.

“I’m all for the free market but when it comes to elderly care, it doesn’t seem right,” he said. “The Beveridge report in 1948 said care would come from the cradle to the grave. The number of people in care homes will increase over the next two decades. We need extra resources just to improve standards at the moment.

“Someone along the line is going to have to push the button and say ‘let’s look at this’. We spend around 5.5 per cent of GDP on caring for older people. In France and Germany, it’s something like 12 per cent.”

The Scottish Executive believes improving health and home care will limit increases in the cost of elderly care.