Letter to the Press: Human Rights and Quality in care homes
Dear Editor
Last week’s community column by David Hogarth reminds us of the importance of the quality of care homes, and especially the “human side”. In 2007, when I chaired Parliament’s Select Committee on Human Rights, we published a detailed report on these issues: a clear example of how important human rights are. The Human Rights Act empowers users of public services including vulnerable care home residents, who would otherwise be powerless in the face of inherently unresponsive systems.
Care home residents have a need, reinforced by the law, to be treated with respect for their dignity. A basic understanding of how the Human Rights Act requires the protection of basic principles such as dignity, fairness, respect and equality should be included in training, qualifications, accreditation and re-licensing for health professionals. The majority of care workers work to the best of their ability, but are often constrained by overwhelming workloads and insufficient training.
Older people and their advocates and carers need information about their human rights to ensure that they can claim them from service providers if they wish to do so. However, this should be a matter of last resort. Given the power imbalance between older people and service providers, and their resulting reluctance to complain, it is neither realistic nor appropriate to expect older people to shoulder the burden for ensuring they are treated with respect for their human rights. The primary responsibility lies with the management.
Care staff have a vital role to play in ensuring that all patients and residents with whom they come into contact are treated with dignity and respect and are not subjected to the betrayal of trust of physical and mental abuse, which even now still happens as we hear from news reports. A duty to report suspected abuse is more than merely a moral duty, as vulnerable people depend on their abusers to provide them with care.
Yours sincerely
Andrew Dismore
Labour London Assembly candidate for Barnet and Camden
