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You and Yours - Transcript 大象传媒 Radio 4 |
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TX: 27.03.08 - Private Care Homes PRESENTER: LIZ BARCLAY |
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Downloaded from www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE 大象传媒 CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. BARCLAY A quarter of a million people living in private care homes have no legal protection under the Human Rights Act but the government has just announced that it's taking steps to change that. Carolyn Atkinson's been to the Department of Health this morning. Carolyn, what's being proposed? ATKINSON Well this is all to do with the rights of mainly elderly people living in care homes. Now it's become clear that the Human Rights Act doesn't apply to private care homes. So in practical terms it means that people aren't protected by the 12 tenets of the Human Rights Act, those are things like the right to privacy, the right to life, the right to be protected against inhuman and degrading treatment and the right to a family life. Now the Human Rights Act does apply only to public bodies but very few councils run their own care homes these days, so people either pay for care themselves - those are called the self-funders - or the councils who don't have their own care homes themselves pay for the people that they're paying for to live in privately run care homes. Now those privately run care homes are of course protected by the basic laws of the land and of course they're independently regulated. But there's been a loophole when it comes to human rights and last year there was a test case that proved the point basically because the majority of law lords - the majority was three to two - they decided that an 83-year-old woman who had Alzheimer's who was being threatened with eviction from her care homes because there was a disagreement going on between the home and the family, they decided she was not protected by the Human Rights Act. Now ministers had thought that she would have been protected, that that sort of situation would have been covered, so they're rectifying that anomaly, if you like, and that's why we've got today's announcement. But just to be very clear, what they're not doing is they're not changing the Human Rights Act itself, what they are doing is amending something called the Health and Social Care Bill to make sure that publicly funded residents in private care homes do have the rights. BARCLAY Well let's hear the detail. I've been speaking to Ivan Lewis, who is the Minister for Care Services. LEWIS When the government introduced the legislation it was very, very clear that this would apply to people in receipt of public funding living in all care homes. There was subsequently a House of Lords judgement which meant that that wasn't the case, which is why we want to put an amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill, which is going through Parliament at the moment, to ensure that those people who are being publicly funded are living in private homes are covered by the Human Rights Act, that was always the intention and it's very important that we reinstate that. Alongside that though today I'm also announcing for the first time that people who are self-funders, who currently have nowhere to go independently, I'm also announcing that we will come forward with detailed proposals later this year so self-funders will have the right to go to independent adjudication if they're not satisfied with the way their complaints are heard. BARCLAY The industry says that this isn't needed, that private homes are already independently regulated and that there are policies in place to protect residents. LEWIS Well there are many ways that we can protect older people through regulation, through commissioning decisions that local authorities make. What this is about is the protection of some of the most vulnerable older people in our society. One of the concerns that's been articulated in recent times, for example, is if an older person becomes a problem for an establishment or if a relative has a fallout with the owner of a home too often older people are threatened with eviction and if the Human Rights Act was in force in terms of publicly funded older people in that position it would be far harder for a home that wanted to do that to take that kind of unacceptable action. We should remember of course that the vast majority of people managing and working in and running private residential and nursing homes in this country do a really good job and try and provide the highest possible quality care. But this is about making sure that everybody has a high level of protection than is the case at the moment. BARCLAY Minister for Care Services Ivan Lewis. Well Andrew Harrop is Head of Policy from the charity Age Concern. Andrew, you must welcome this move? HARROP Yes, it's excellent news. We've been actually campaigning for this for about five years, since we first heard that human rights in private care homes weren't covered. BARCLAY So what kind of things will this prevent? HARROP The two human rights this really is about is the right to home life, even if you live in an institution, and the right not to be treated in a degrading manner. So let me give you some examples. The Minister just mentioned the case of the 83-year-old who was threatened with eviction in unreasonable circumstances. Some of the other cases we've heard about is people being left for hours in their own waste, we've heard about people being fed while they're on the toilet and we've heard about people being sedated for the convenience of the staff rather than for their own medical needs. All of those are examples of degrading treatment. BARCLAY But many older people, especially those who don't have family or friends involved in their care, won't be aware of these new rights under the act or too frail to take action. HARROP It's really important that friends and family and professional advisors work with older people, who often, as you rightly say, can't use the law themselves. The reason this is such an important announcement though is that people can take their care homes to court themselves, rather than it being a distant regulator that is the only body that can supervise them. So it does mean that with friends and family and advice workers they can take action. BARCLAY What about this apparent anomaly that people who pay for themselves will be treated differently? HARROP That's right. It does seem really unfair that two people in the same home, in neighbouring bedrooms, are going to be treated very differently by the law. We campaigned for everyone in the private care industry to be covered, unfortunately ministers have only gone halfway today. But it is still excellent news that a quarter of million people will get this new protection. BARCLAY Andrew Harrop of Age Concern, thank you. Carolyn, the government also announced this morning £2 million to be spent on research into elder abuse. ATKINSON Yes this is a project in conjunction with Comic Relief and for the first time what's going to happen is they're going to investigate the extent of elder abuse both in care homes and on NHS wards, so they're going to use that money over the next few years to just find out how widespread it is. And of course here at You and Yours we're very interested in your experiences, so please do let us know by calling 0800 044 044 or you can e-mail us through the website. Back to the You and Yours homepage The 大象传媒 is not responsible for external websites |
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