AS I SEE IT
BY MARIANNE HERON
In a reminder of the shiver of concern that ran down our collective spines following the harrowing RTE Investigates programme on shocking nursing home care, Tuesday, June 17 was World Elder Abuse Awareness Day. The focus of the day ws on emotional loneliness and social isolation, two powerful factors involved in elder abuse.
The scenes caught by RTE’s undercover carers exposed how the lack of empathetic care, basic facilities and staff shortages in the two Emeis nursing homes featured, can cause neglect, distress and loss of dignity for vulnerable residents.
The programme prompts the fear, it could be your mother, your aunt your uncle, your grandpa suffering like this.
In future, as you grow old and in need of care, it could be you, as our demographics tilt with the number of over 65s set to double to 1.6 million by 2051.
Elder abuse or neglect isn’t confined to nursing or care homes, it can happen in the community, in family settings and in hospitals, especially where the individual is suffering from dementia. It’s an emotive subject, one that remains hidden, often due to the victim’s inability to speak out. But the international problem of abuse and neglect does seem to be exposed more frequently in private nursing and care homes costing an average of €1,500 a week here in Ireland.
Emeis is Ireland’s largest elder care provider and the company featured in another scandal in France three years ago. Little action was taken there, except that the company name was changed from Orpea to Emeis and the other private nursing home chain involved Korian became Clariane. Their shares are up on the stock market.
“The higher the rate of profit the higher the rate of elder abuse,” comments Dominique Predali, French author and contributor to books and papers on the subject including On Tue Les Vieux ( We Kill the Old). The link between profit and abuse is borne out by studies in Canada and the US.
“Every now and then, there is a scandal in one facility, a book, and a TV documentary about it. The government is shocked to discover that such abuse has been going on, they promise strict measures that never happen, and everybody forgets about it until the next scandal,” says Dominique. Twenty years after the Leass Cross private nursing home scandal here, despite recommendations and the setting up of the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA), the same shameful care standards are still occurring.
One answer is to nationalise care as Norway has done or to move away from the industrial model of care to home-based care like Denmark, where nursing homes are no longer being built.
“Approximately 30% of the 500,000 members of Family Carers Ireland are caring for elderly relatives.The majority want to care for their relatives at home and the elderly want to be at home but residential care may be a last resort, most often because they don’t get the right kind of support for home care,” says Catherine Cox, Head of Communications and Policy at Family Carers Ireland. While the Fair Deal scheme supports nursing home care it is difficult for home carers to get respite care, equipment, therapies and other back-up assistance. “What we really want is statutory support for home care.”
It is hardly helpful to talk about warehousing the elderly who are no longer able to live independently, especially for the carers who have struggled to look after relatives before having to resort to nursing home care. “The RTE programme is going to put more pressure on home care. It will put the fear of God into people if their loved ones have to go into care homes. They shouldn’t feel guilty if they have to do so. They want to be assured that they are cared for as well as possible,” says Catherine.
Will anything happen to ensure that the kind of scenes exposed by RTE won’t happen in future? The Alliance, supporting the nursing home sector where there are more 400 nursing homes, has called for a review of HIQA which is charged with care home inspections while the Department of Health is reviewing the situation.
Kicking the can down the road again isn’t the answer for a system clearly in need of a radical overhaul where caring care should be paramount.
