There is a story on the Community Care website this morning about an ombudsman’s report relating a woman, Mrs J, who was placed in a care home in Bristol.

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This was a  care home which was not only rated ‘poor’ or had no stars under the old rating system that doesn’t exist anymore but from the time she was placed in 2005 until Feb 2009 when she finally did move (only to die later that year) , the responsible council – Bristol City Council – did not monitor or review her placement adequately.

Her son, Mr P, asked for his mother to be moved however as the cost of the identified ‘replacement’ care home was higher than the cost that the local authority would pay, he had to make ‘top up’ payments.

The Care Home which strangely is not named in the report – and I find that rather suspicious to be honest, had had a number of safeguarding alerts over the period of Mrs J’s placement there. It had received a zero star rating and there had been a couple of ‘freezes on admissions’ – probably relating to the safeguarding alerts.

The council investigated and placed the responsibility entirely on the care home however the ombudsman found that the  council had failed Mrs J as it was the commissioner of the service

As the press release on the site of the Local Government Ombudsman says

The Ombudsman considers that there was maladministration in the Council’s reviewing and safeguarding strategy and is concerned about the poor communication between the Council and the family. The Ombudsman also finds that the Council had not properly considered the circumstances around Mrs J’s move to an alternative placement, which had led to Mr J contributing to the cost.

For the pain and suffering caused by the lack of appropriate safeguarding and review procedures, Bristol City Council were ordered to pay compensation to Mrs J of £6000 and to Mr J of £500 as well as pay back the contributions Mr J made towards his mother’s care between February 2009 and October 2009 when she died.

That’s the background and now my thoughts about this – deep breath.

It’s horrific. Firstly not everyone has family that are as determined as Mr J to pursue and stand up for residents in care homes. If Mrs J had not had a son, this poor practice and abusive situation may have continued with perhaps, some perfunctory safeguarding alerts but with little action in relation to the management of the care home taking place. The care home working in conjunction with the CSCI (predecessor to the CQC as inspection service) where people living in homes that are rated as poor (of course, they are not rated at all now – easy get out of this situation?) continue to do so without batting an eyelid as long as the fees are low enough to be met by the local authority.

Another thing – what about everyone else living in the same care home? Seriously. Were they moved as well?

Why is the name of the care home not given? Surely this information should be transparent. A government (and this not not just the present one but the previous one too – I am making no party political point here) which is bound to link choice to care decisions is finding it quite handy to mask the names of inadequate and frankly, dangerous, care homes.

I did a search of care homes in Bristol which had poor ratings at the time that the rating system was abolished in 2010 and there were none listed. Perhaps they had managed to haul one more star. These are the homes I found that had one star. It may well be none of these homes but it makes pretty depressing reading looking through inspection reports from ‘adequate’ care homes.

This raises a number of issues – mostly why on earth can’t family members and social workers making placements in residential homes know which home it was that failed so appallingly? Isn’t that how ‘markets’ work? Or is it through hiding behind reports which obfuscate and confuse and seem to dance around the real issues of care – in the long periods between when they appear.

Finally, a thought or two about the way the council were criticised and censured. £6500 will not deter a council from acting in the same way again. The cost of fully staffing/training a competent review team may be much much higher than that. Quality Assurance Teams in the councils are one of those ‘non-jobs’ or ‘back-office’ jobs that Pickles seems to like to mock but in the face of a national regulatory system that is little more than a joke, they could and would provide a great service to citizens who need placement – particularly those without strong advocates and family members to stand up for them.

We need these stories to have more publicity though because there needs to be a greater understanding of the challenges faced and the poor quality that has almost become tacitly acceptable in the ‘free market’ of care.

The imposition of the market economy into the care sector hasn’t allowed the cream to rise to the top for those who are wholly reliant on support for placement from local authorities. It has allowed care homes which charge low fees to thrive despite poor care provision because it suits both parties to allow them to continue and to allow their names to be protected.

This makes me angry. I did not come into social work to deliver what I consider to be poor care or poor care services. I want everyone to be able to access good quality care and support regardless of their income, savings, property values or their family or friends’ willingness and ability to advocate on their behalf.

In a world of rose-tinted spectacles through which the Care Minister seems to envisage that people like Mrs P will have more ‘choice and control’, we have to make sure that basic minimum standards of care are respected for everyone who is reliant on them.

And we aren’t.

UPDATE – BBC have published the name of the care home  – it is Amerind Grove Nursing Home owned and run by BUPA.   Mrs J is Mrs Iris Shipway.  This is the report from 2008 which gave Amerind Grove a 0 star rating.  It is a 171 bedded home. Stop and think about that for a while. 171 people in a care home. That’s big business. That’s not a ‘home’ – that’s warehousing. Would we place younger adults in 171-bedded units. Let alone poor 171 bedded units. And what about the other 170 people living there when Mrs Shipway’s treatment was so poor. Can we see how the large companies have local authority commissioners ‘over a barrel’? They would not be able to find alternative placements for that amount of people.

The answer is less institutionalisation – more creative thinking about alternatives to residential and nursing cares – the answer is not 171 bedded homes.

Rant over.