Care home abuse: ministers move to restore confidence

Following Panorama investigation, coalition announces ‘guarantee’ residents will be found alternative accommodation Downing Street moved to prevent a collapse in public confidence in the care of Britain’s most vulnerable citizens amid fears over the solvency of the country’s biggest residential home operator for the elderly and widespread horror at revelations of abuse in a private facility for people with learning disabilities. Ministers abandoned insistence that these were local issues by announcing a “guarantee” that 31,000 elderly residents of the care home chain Southern Cross would be found alternative accommodation if the company went under. The prime minister’s official spokesman said Downing Street was in touch with Southern Cross. “Our role is to ensure we keep in close contact with what is going on, and keep monitoring the situation, and we will do what we can to ensure there is protection for anyone affected by this.” The move amounted to an effective repudiation of the government’s commitment to localism. Local authority leaders, who had been told that the Southern Cross problem was a contractual issue for them to resolve, were unaware of the nature of the guarantee, but they issued their own assurance that all the company’s residents – including those who pay their own care fees – would be looked after. Meanwhile, Downing Street has demanded a full report following the disclosure by the BBC Panorama programme of systematic abuse at a unit for people with learning disabilities near Bristol run by the Castlebeck company, a firm ultimately owned by Irish tycoons JP McManus, John Magnier and Dermot Desmond. The Department of Health had been insisting behind the scenes that it was an issue purely for the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the care sector regulator, and the local authorities and NHS primary care trusts that paid the £3,500-a-week fees for the young adults they referred there. But the health department found itself obliged to step in. No 10 has asked for a detailed account of what the various agencies knew and did about the regime at the unit. The CQC, which failed to follow up tip-offs from a whistleblower who then contacted Panorama, has admitted its mistakes were “unforgivable”. For ministers there were unnerving signs that controversy over social care was seamlessly taking over from controversy over the government’s becalmed NHS reforms, now that its “listening exercise” on complaints about the reforms has concluded pending a report. The clear link between the two in the public eye is that the NHS plans include outsourcing NHS care to “any qualified provider”. Stephen Dorrell, the chair of the Commons health select committee who has voiced doubts about some aspects of the government’s NHS plans, outlined arrangements for a wide-ranging inquiry by his committee in the autumn. Dorrell, a former Tory health secretary, said the inquiry would look broadly at the process of commissioning care and support for vulnerable adults, following a report due next month from a government commission on the funding of social care, led by the economist Andrew Dilnot. “The questions will be about how can these stories of abuse arise,” Dorrell said. “There was Panorama yesterday, but also the report last week on care of the elderly in NHS hospitals, all the issues around Southern Cross and the CQC in particular. “We are talking about 70% of patient load of the health service, that is people with long-term needs and conditions, and so often we focus on waiting times for elective operations. This is a far bigger issue.” Referring to the Castlebeck case, Dorrell added: “Someone had to sign the cheque that the care home operator was being paid to provide a service of £3,000 per week. I presume the majority of those cases were paid for with public funds. The people who signed the cheque have a duty to make certain that standards are of an adequate nature.” Long-term care Social care Disability Health Health policy Liberal-Conservative coalition David Brindle Polly Curtis guardian.co.uk

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