The Care Inspectorate’s crystal ball doesn’t work!

Scotland's dysfunctional Care Inspectorate

There is distrust of Scotland’s Care Inspectorate among owners and managers of well-resourced care homes for older people which deliver a consistently-high standard of care – where the owner has a background in nursing or care and plays a key role in the provision of care or where residents in commercially-viable care homes can enjoy the benefits of a care group’s economies of scale.

With justification, care professionals question the effectiveness and judgement of a social care regulator staffed by inspectors with “soft skills” who can, the Care Inspectorate claims, “somehow, sense” when something isn’t right on inspections when it should be hiring staff with experience in the fields of regulation and compliance and people with technical and analytical expertise which no professional regulator can do without.

The resulting opinion-based decision-making by poorly-trained Care Inspectorate staff leads care professionals and lay experts to conclude that the Care Inspectorate fails to act fairly, impartially, or consistently when it shames publicly one care provider but not another, when things go wrong; when it exposes the hygiene standards of one while stonewalling disclosures of abuse brought against another; when it turns up only after the event, when it is too late … if, that is, it turns up at all.

In the inspection year 2020/21, the Care Inspectorate investigated only 6% of complaints about care provision and, as BetterCareScotland data show, during the Covid-19 lockdowns, the Care Inspectorate chose to conduct routine inspections of well-run care homes for older people but failed to inspect care homes about which serious and verifiable complaints had been made.

What care providers say about the Care Inspectorate

In evidence to Scotland’s Parliament in 2020, care providers raised serious concerns about Scotland’s social care regulator. Typically, they felt:

“Inspectors do not demonstrate expertise or hard knowledge of the care provider’s operations.”

“There should be more frequent communication & direct contact.”

“The Care Inspectorate needs to engage directly with service users.”

“The Care Inspectorate should be aware of & promote staff needs: training, wellbeing, mental health.”

“Does not understand the business model & sustainability.”

“The Care Inspectorate has to move beyond the rhetoric.”

These are reasonable expectations … regulated social care providers in Scotland do, after all, fund the sector’s regulator!

BetterCareScotland’s own analysis finds Scotland’s social care regulator has a consistently-high fail-rate in identifying and targeting those care homes which pose the greatest risk to the wellbeing of residents and staff.

This leads us to ask if Scotland’s Care Inspectorate serves any meaningful purpose for service users and if its poor track record in uncovering issues in the delivery of care and improving care outcomes is by design or outcome – for Scotland’s Care Inspectorate does not operate in a vacuum.

Using data, which we update daily, we test the hypothesis that the Care Inspectorate is fair and consistent and identifies the key risks in residential care provision for vulnerable children and older people in Scotland.

We find ill-discipline and evidence of confirmation bias in the radical differences in approach taken by those who inspect the independent boarding school sector. This should concern the schools themselves let alone the parents and guardians of pupils who are expected to, indeed, have no choice but to rely on Care Inspectorate inspection reports to fully reflect the facts.

And, our data indicate that, when things go very badly wrong for the most vulnerable – typically, women – in care homes for older people, the Care Inspectorate fails to act independently of Councils when the root cause of neglect or abuse is the Councils’ failure to comply with their obligations under the National Care Home Contract. We hypothesise that Councils take all reasonable steps to comply with their duty to provide ‘Best Value’ in their use of public money to keep in business independent care home owners with whom they contract.

BetterCareScotland asks, also, if the Care Inspectorate fulfils its statutory obligation to act independently of councils in High Level Investigations or if it is incentivised to close ranks and follow the councils’ lead. And, therefore, if the Care Inspectorate in its current form adds any value whatsoever to social care delivery and provision for people in Scotland.

BetterCareScotland finds that Scotland’s Care Inspectorate has lost its way and the trust of the social care sector, people receiving care and their families!

The Care Inspectorate lacks both economics, analytical, and technical expertise and risk management and compliance experience without which no professional regulator in any sector can function.

We find that, where a professional regulator would use its own resources and refine over time its data and processes to better identify and respond to the risks of registered services, the Care Inspectorate claims to be “intelligence-led” which means, in practice, that it depends entirely on outsiders to flag issues of which it would otherwise be unaware and then proceeds to second-guess them!

In effect, the Care Inspectorate has outsourced its responsibilities – with clear implications for people’s welfare and human rights – without a reduction in headcount.

To receive by email a copy of BetterCareScotland’s, February 2021 research paper for Scotland’s Parliament,

HOLDING SCOTLAND’S CARE INSPECTORATE TO ACCOUNT?
A critical evaluation of Parliament’s scrutiny of Scotland’s social care regulator!

please click here.

BetterCareScotland’s data, from the lived experience of our subscribers – service users, their family members and friends together with residential care staff, former and in-post social workers, and Care Inspectorate staff who dare not blow the whistle for fear of the consequences – show that Scotland’s Care Inspectorate lacks the professional expertise expected of a competent regulator.

By actively seeking to recruit people with “soft skills” when risk management, governance, regulatory and compliance expertise and technical and analytical skills and experience are needed, we find a Care Inspectorate with historical leadership issues and an organisation which fails to meet its intended purpose..

It leads us to question whether Scotland’s Care Inspectorate plays a meaningful role in uncovering issues in the delivery of care and if this is by design or outcome – for Scotland’s Care Inspectorate does not operate in a vacuum. Our subscribers’ experiences suggest that the Care Inspectorate fails to act independently of local authorities when things go wrong.

We test the hypothesis that the Care Inspectorate is fair and consistent and recognises the key risks to children and older people in residential care in Scotland for we find evidence of it failing to target commercially-unviable care homes for older people that are strategic-fits for Councils which put cost before quality of care despite the risks to residents and care home staff even when things go badly wrong. And, we find an inconsistency of approach by inspectors of the independent boarding school sector which should be of great concern for the parents and guardians of boarders.

BetterCareScotland asks, also, if the Care Inspectorate fulfils its statutory obligation to act independently of local authorities in High Level Investigations or if it is incentivised to close ranks and follow the local authorities’ lead. And, therefore, if the Care Inspectorate in its current form adds any value whatsoever to social care delivery and provision processes for older people in Scotland.

SCOTLAND’S HIPPY DIPPY CARE INSPECTORATE

A former chief executive of Scotland’s Care Inspectorate claimed that the “soft skills” of the Care Inspectorate’s staff enable them, in some hippy dippy way it seems, to “sense” when things don’t feel right on inspection visits to care homes for older people in Scotland.

BetterCareScotland’s data show that the Care Inspectorate’s crystal ball doesn’t work!

Email BetterCareScotland for a copy of our February 2021 research paper for Scotland’s Parliament,

HOLDING SCOTLAND’S CARE INSPECTORATE TO ACCOUNT?
A critical evaluation of Parliament’s scrutiny of Scotland’s social care regulator!

SO LAST CENTURY

In general, our data indicate that the Care Inspectorate’s philosophy, operations and methods are ‘so last century’. By way of example, during the pandemic, the Care Inspectorate produced fortnightly reports for Scotland’s Parliament from which nothing can be ascertained or comparisons made or conclusions drawn from one report to the next. At a time when Scotland’s decision-makers needed key facts and reliable hard data that could be eyeballed by busy people, the Care Inspectorate supplied bed-time stories.

What these fortnightly reports do provide, however, is an insight into the Care Inspectorate’s inconsistency of approach on inspection visits, a common complaint of registered services and social workers. We see this as evidence of ill-discipline which no well-regulated sector should observe of its oversight bodies when confidence is needed and springs from the Care Inspectorate’s reliance on “soft skills” which, by their nature, create bias and subjectivity where certainty is key.

By extracting the information content from these fortnightly reports, BetterCareScotland has produced the sort of meaningful data Scotland’s Parliament should have expected to receive. It is an irony that, despite BetterCareScotland’s resource constraints, our data are superior to those of the regulator of Scotland’s social care system.

WHAT YOU CAN DO!

Join BetterCareScotland and campaign to see people in Scotland and their human rights treated with respect at their time of greatest need.

Join forces with us and support people being silenced by their local authority or Scotland’s Care Inspectorate.

Help us to hold local authority chief executives and social care bosses for exposing vulnerable people to risk.

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” … Maya Angelou

Help to ensure that the vested interests and perverse incentive structures in Scotland’s social care system can be be designed out of the National Care Service so that the Scottish Government can deliver on its promise of good care outcomes, as standard, for all people in need of care in Scotland.

If you have a story you need to tell and would like to discuss it with BetterCareScotland, please feel free to get in touch with us by email.

We will protect your information and will not share it with others.

If you prefer to remain anonymous, you can tell us of your experiences by completing only the ‘Message’ box of the feedback form on our website’s Home page.

Be in the loop and receive updates from BetterCareScotland today!

Love and Peace!

 Posted on August 19, 2022 by

 Accountability, Better Care Scotland, BetterCareScotland, Care Homes for Older People in Scotland, Care Inspectorate Scotland, Human rights

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Scotland’s Parliament exposes care home residents to risk!

Scotland’s Parliament takes the Care Inspectorate on trust

Failing to hold Scotland’s social care regulator to account exposes care home residents to risk.

On 25 August, 2020, Scotland’s Parliament had an opportunity to hold the country’s social care regulator, the Care Inspectorate, to account when its then chief executive was called to give evidence to Parliament’s Health and Sport Committee at a meeting to consider the question: “How well is the Care Inspectorate fulfilling its statutory roles?”.

This was at a time when people in Scotland were losing confidence in the public administration of the country’s social care system – Scotland’s government, local Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs) and the Care Inspectorate were perceived to have exposed residents and staff in care homes for older people to the risk of infection from Covid-19 by expecting care homes to admit from clinical settings people who had not been tested for the virus and, later, to have breached care homes’ first line of defence against the virus by requiring them to open their doors to the Care Inspectorate inspectors and local HSCP officials to, in effect, count the face masks.

BetterCareScotland’s data show that these inspections were poorly-targeted and, therefore, needlessly exposed residents and staff, including the Care Inspectorate and HSCPs’ own staff, to the risk of infection.

Against this backdrop, it is hard to imagine a more pressing time for Scotland’s Parliament to examine rigorously the role of the Care Inspectorate.

But the minutes of this meeting show that Scotland’s Parliament failed to represent the evidence solicited from care providers and industry groups who had, for compelling reasons, expressed the concern that Scotland’s social care regulator is failing to fulfil its statutory obligations. And, with Parliament having failed to hold the Care Inspectorate to account in committee, the chief executive of Scotland’s social care regulator informed the Care Inspectorate Board on 30 September 2020 that “the session went well”.

It had, of course, gone very badly indeed! That the Care Inspectorate chief executive failed to see this validates the concerns care providers had expressed.

Unlike Scotland’s Parliament, BetterCareScotland would not claim to have all of the answers to the issues in social care provision facing Scotland but we do have the questions that Scotland’s Parliament seemed unwilling or unable to ask. And, by making sense of publicly-available date and using statistical techniques we know where and how to find the evidence to support the awkward questions to which the public officials who administer and regulate Scotland’s social care system should be expected to provide answers.

The aim of the Health & Sport Committee meeting on 25 August, 2020 is clear: to determine “How well is the Care Inspectorate fulfilling its statutory roles?”

But, the transcript of the meeting shows that Scotland’s Parliament paid lip service to the question and failed to reflect the views of those who had responded to Parliament’s call for evidence and, so failed to challenge the regulator’s then chief executive. This is unfortunate since there are serious flaws in the Care Inspectorate’s operations that need to be addressed.

Knowing the questions that need to be asked helps to get at the facts. For example, that the Care Inspectorate lacks the economics, analytical, and technical expertise and risk management and compliance experience without which no professional regulator in any sector can function. And that, where a professional regulator uses its own resources and refines its data and processes to better identify and respond to the risks of a regulated entity, the Care Inspectorate claims to be “intelligence-led” which means it depends entirely on other people to flag issues of which it would otherwise be unaware. In essence, the Care Inspectorate has sub-contracted its responsibilities to outsiders.

With clear implications for people’s welfare and human rights!

To receive by email a copy of BetterCareScotland’s, February 2021 research paper for Scotland’s Parliament,

HOLDING SCOTLAND’S CARE INSPECTORATE TO ACCOUNT?
A critical evaluation of Parliament’s scrutiny of Scotland’s social care regulator!

please click here.

WHAT YOU CAN DO!

Join BetterCareScotland and campaign to see people in Scotland and their human rights treated with respect at their time of greatest need.

Join forces with us and support people being silenced by their local authority.

Help us to hold local authority chief executives and social care bosses for exposing vulnerable people to risk.

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” … Maya Angelou

Help to ensure that the vested interests and perverse incentive structures in Scotland’s social care system can be be designed out of the National Care Service so that the Scottish Government can deliver on its promise of good care outcomes, as standard, for all people in need of care in Scotland.

If you have a story you need to tell and would like to discuss it with BetterCareScotland, please feel free to get in touch with us by email.

We will protect your information and will not share it with others.

If you prefer to remain anonymous, you can tell us of your experiences by completing only the ‘Message’ box of the feedback form on our website’s Home page.

Be in the loop and receive updates from BetterCareScotland today!

Love and Peace!

 Posted on August 19, 2022 by

 Accountability, Adult Social Care in Scotland, Better Care Scotland, BetterCareScotland, Care Homes for Older People in Scotland, Care Inspectorate, Care Inspectorate Scotland, Free Personal Care Allowance, National Care Service Scotland

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Ticking time-bombs!

Ticking time-bombs at the heart of Scotland’s social care system!

Increasingly, the people best-placed to monitor social care delivery and provision in Scotland find themselves stonewalled when they reach out to their local authority or to Scotland’s social care regulator, the Care Inspectorate, when things go wrong for them or for a family member or friend.

From their experiences, it is clear that scrutiny of the operations, performance and risks of Scotland’s 32 local authorities and the country’s Care Inspectorate is so lax that public sector staff working in social care in Scotland are, in effect, taken on trust while chief executives look the other way.

This is reminiscent of the light-touch regulation that sections of the British banking industry once enjoyed but which set the scene for high-profile scandals and blow-ups, like that of Barings in 1995, and led to the current ever-evolving system of financial regulation and risk management designed to align the incentives of retail banks, financials services firms and their customers.

BetterCareScotland exposes the unfortunate consequences for people experiencing poor social care outcomes in Scotland on the very day that the UK Parliament’s cross-party Joint Committee on Human Rights acknowledges the pain and suffering that public institutions and state employees can knowingly inflict on people at their time of greatest need.

Against this backdrop, people in Scotland are routinely silenced, blamed, even threatened by high-handed and judgemental local authority and Care Inspectorate staff when they reach out, their concerns deflected and covered-up. For, Scotland’s local authorities and its Care Inspectorate have brought the country’s social care system to its knees, a fact that the heads of these bodies take care to conceal.

The lived-experiences of BetterCareScotland’s subscribers reveal grotesque abuses of position by local authority social care bosses and chief executives and a supposedly-independent Care Inspectorate lacking in conviction and seemingly unaware that it has a role in exercising oversight of social care delivery by Scotland’s local authorities. It is clear that Scotland’s Care Inspectorate and some of the country’s local authorities should have been placed in special measures years ago.

From 2028/29, if Scotland’s dysfunctional social care system is replaced by a fully-operational National Care Service, local authorities will no longer have responsibility for the delivery of social care. But 2028/29 cannot come soon enough. With ticking time-bombs at the heart of the country’s social care system, four years is a long time for things to go badly wrong!

By analysing data from our subscribers’ lived experiences of social care delivery, provision, and regulation – whether as a service user or a family member or friend, a carer, a former or in-post social worker, or a Care Inspectorate staffer, none off whom dare blow the whistle for fear of the consequences – BetterCareScotland identifies risks to which people in desperate need of care in Scotland are exposed but which become apparent to them and their family members and friends only when it is too late.

Our data show that, when things do go wrong, local authority and Care Inspectorate staff are incentivised to go to great lengths to keep people at an informational disadvantage when transparency should be expected. And to deny people a remedy, even when the only remedy sought is the assurance that no-one else will be abused as they were. It is hard to imagine a social care system further removed from the Nordic model to which Scotland aspires.

The experience of our contributors is that no form of retaliation seems out of bounds to local authority staff when people reach out after things go wrong. In the words of Tom, a BetterCareScotland subscriber, “You will be deflected, denigrated, discredited, ridiculed, blamed, even threatened by the chief executive’s staff – and that’s just before lunch!” But, such remarkable stoicism conceals the dreadful impacts on the mental health of people finding themselves at the mercy of uncaring local authority and Care Inspectorate staff.

In a series of ‘ticking time-bomb’ blogs, BetterCareScotland will reveal the grotesque nature of the risks to which people at their time of greatest need are knowingly exposed by local authority and Care Inspectorate staff in Scotland who, despite their duty of care, are found to act in their own self-interest at the direction of senior co-workers, management teams, department heads and, ultimately, unaccountable chief executives. And of governance gaps and leadership issues which enable vested interests and perverse incentive structures to be hard-wired into Scotland’s social care system for the convenience of public sector staff.

Subscribe to BetterCareScotland to receive by email our ‘ticking time-bomb’ blog posts.

Love and Peace!

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” … Maya Angelou

Help to ensure that the vested interests and perverse incentive structures in Scotland’s social care system can be be designed out of the National Care Service so that the Scottish Government can deliver on its promise of good care outcomes, as standard, for all people in need of care in Scotland.

If you have a story you need to tell and would like to discuss it with BetterCareScotland, please feel free to get in touch with us by email.

We will protect your information and will not share it with others.

If you prefer to remain anonymous, you can tell us of your experiences by completing only the ‘Message’ box of the feedback form on our website’s Home page.

Be in the loop and receive updates from BetterCareScotland today!

Love and Peace!

 Posted on July 15, 2022 by

 Accountability, Adult Social Care in Scotland, Better Care Scotland, BetterCareScotland, Care Inspectorate Scotland, Governance, Human rights, National Care Service Scotland, Public Sector, Social Worker, Whistleblower

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One woman tells her story … #3

Caught in Scotland's social care web

Of misplaced trust. Of bureaucracy & cover-up. Of a social care system paying lip service to the needs of Scotland’s most vulnerable.
Extract III: caught in the Council’s social care web

My heart sank on seeing myself back where I was three years ago, listening to a social worker bent on persuading me to agree to something I would come to regret … but, this time around, knowing I was being deceived. After the phone call, we checked the diary and found that it was three years to the very day since the previous social worker pulled the self-same stunt, one that saved her employer, the local Council, an amount of around fourteen thousand pounds at my expense for it deprived me for seventeen months of my entitlement to Free Personal Care. And, here was the new social worker, making contact for the first time, intent on deceiving me the same way.

Free Personal Care in Scotland is a social care benefit to which people, aged sixty-five or over and assessed as being in need, are entitled, irrespective of means. In my own case, three years ago I was in my hundredth year and had moved in with my son after being abused in a care home for older people. My own home had been sold to pay for my residential care. And, with only the last vestiges of the proceeds of the sale of my home left to me and a small pension for a rainy day – an increasingly more frequent event you will discover if you reach my age – the local Council had resolved to impoverish me completely.

I looked at my son in disbelief. “To the very day!”, I said, knowing that this aspect of the matter was of no real significance but, somehow, it encapsulated my sense of outrage.

“It’s a scam!”, my son said, summing it up perfectly. “You’ll remember we worked out that the previous social worker had pulled a fast one when the Council blamed us for what she’d done. This latest attempt shows it to be a scam, I have absolutely no doubt!”

“A scam!”, I repeated, nodding as if I were deliberating on the meaning of the whole thing, its implications and all it entailed. “But, it’s so simple! Too simple!”, I said. “How on earth were we taken in the last time!”

My son was frowning. He’s a level-headed economist with a reputation for making sense of raw data but – while I have no trouble stating that I hate cheats, period – he has his Buddhist beliefs to consider. He got up and made tea. I switched on the radio. The anti-Fascist message of Shostakovich Seven that was playing on Radio 3 was lost on neither of us.

Over tea, my son explained that some of the most successful scams are unsophisticated but, for people to be taken in by them, scammers need to appear, not just plausible but, genuine. He said that social workers who abuse their position won’t typically face such hurdles as they expect to be and are taken on trust which makes their crimes especially egregious. But, what bothered him about the telephone call today was that it was made by a social worker determined to shaft me without any of the usual foreplay. “That’s a measure of the Council’s cynicism!”, he said. “There wasn’t even the slightest pretence at common courtesy.” As my son spoke, had I been less superstitious, I would have cursed her, yet another who was willing to exploit the fears and anxieties of people like me.

“The fact that your new social worker has just tried to pull the same stunt means there’s a systematic aspect to this scam, that it’s a well-worn as it’s worked in the past and that you or, rather, we are seen as an easy target. Since they know there’s nothing to lose, they’ll miss no opportunity to perpetrate these sorts of scams.”

“Oh dear! Easy targets! Does this new social worker really think we’ll fall for it again?”, I asked. I felt uneasy about Council’s staff having me in their sights.

“It’s likely she won’t know you’ve already been scammed. From what I’ve seen, the Council’s records don’t reflect the facts. They’re more a work of fiction.”

“The effort the last social worker went to!”, I reflected, “All those visits when I had better things to do than listen to her waffle on about her parterre. Leading me to believe she cared! Does she never stop and think of the harm she causes!”

“Do you remember, we used to think her ineffectual at best or lazy at worst?”

“But, it turns out that she’s nothing short of a psychopath!” My son looked intently at me. I could see he agreed. “Only a psychopath would gain someone’s trust only to take advantage and then lie about it to cover their own back!”

“It’s a blessed relief she’s no longer your social worker. And, that we know now to question absolutely everything this latest social worker says! She won’t be happy about being challenged!”

“Good!”, I said. “Good!”

To my relief, listening to my son, I realised that I no longer harboured doubts about involving him in this hideous business, pitted against people who do not share our values. I could see why the Council chief executive was so desperate to get him off her back. But, being dismissed, ridiculed, blamed, threatened, ignored, even threatened by her staff told us she had things to hide. And, strengthened our resolve.

“So, our emails to the chief executive about the last social worker depriving me of my Free Personal Care allowance won’t be on my file!”

“If they’re anywhere in the Council’s records, they’ll be buried. They won’t be flagged. The chief executive took care to do no more than acknowledge our emails. But I made sure to copy her into absolutely everything so that she can’t claim to know nothing. Today’s phone call might end up resurrecting the whole matter!”

“I fail to see why the Council needs a chief executive to do a job a robot could do! I’d know where I was with a robot!”

We laughed!

“The most primitive robot circa 1976 at that!”, my son agreed! “Just think of all the social care that could be funded from what the Council would save on her salary and fat pension!”

“You’ve become almost as cynical as your old mum!”, I said. “I’m lucky to have you on my side. I dread to think what might happen otherwise!”

When I suggested that the chief executive would respond differently if it were her mother being scammed by the Council, my son squeezed my hand.

“Your fists are clenched!”, he said. “Is it safe for me to sit so close?”

I agreed to put the whole matter to the back of my mind and leave it to my son to send a friendly email to the new social worker outlining our understanding of today’s telephone conversation, taking care to avoid alerting her to our concerns for, this time we needed hard evidence of the Council’s cynical intent.

We could not have known how that seemingly innocuous email would be received!

BetterCareScotland finds local authority chief executives making no attempt to see serious complaints investigated fully and resolved properly and, instead, employing staff for the express purpose of gaslighting and deflecting those who complain so as to ensure that the authority’s operations escape scrutiny – even if, as here, the complaint in question exposes a clear conflict of interest with a social worker’s deception saving the local authority a great deal of money at the expense of a service user and could indicate fraudulent activity by a rogue social worker if such activities are not, in fact, sanctioned by the authority.

Those of our subscribers with direct experience of what they have come to characterise as scams, designed by local authorities to deprive them or their family members or friends of social care funding they desperately need, report that the more serious the nature of a complaint, the less interest the local authority chief executive will show, that the staff who investigate complaints will typically be those complained-of, which creates another conflict of interest if this deters people from complaining, that staff will curtail all correspondence when they, invariably, fail to “find evidence” to support the complaint. It is, of course, naive for any local authority chief executive to imagine that, when things go wrong, the authority can systematically rely on such a defence of its failure to keep proper records.

BetterCareScotland would advise people to keep a simple log of all telephone calls and visits from social care staff. Even better, ask your social worker for their personal email address and follow-up every meeting or communication with an email outlining for the record your understanding of what was discussed. Do not be deterred when they fail to reply.

Service-users and their family members and friends should never find themselves having to second guess local authority staff or question their incentives, but our subscriber’s experiences of dysfunctional social care departments and a culture of cover-up when things go wrong suggest that the days of taking on trust your local authority in Scotland are long gone.

Extract III: caught in the Council’s social care web, shows that family members may be as vulnerable to scams perpetrated by local authority staff as the service users themselves when the relationship is based on trust. In properly-regulated sectors, like banking and finance, every imaginable safeguard has been put in place to protect consumers. Not so in social care delivery in Scotland where local authority chief executives are neither held accountable nor sanctioned when things go wrong. This creates no incentive to get things right or to disclose the true state of the authority’s operations.

Subscribe to BetterCareScotland and receive by email further extracts of this brave woman’s compelling story and the stories of other subscribers whose concerns are stonewalled by public bodies entrusted with social care delivery and regulation in Scotland!

If you have a story that you need to tell and you would like to discuss it with BetterCareScotland, please feel free to get in touch with us by email.

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” … Maya Angelou

Love and Peace!

Help to ensure that the vested interests and perverse incentive structures in Scotland’s social care system can be be designed out of the National Care Service so that the Scottish Government can deliver on its promise of good care outcomes, as standard, for all people in need of care in Scotland.

If you have a story you need to tell and would like to discuss it with BetterCareScotland, please feel free to get in touch with us by email.

We will protect your information and will not share it with others.

If you prefer to remain anonymous, you can tell us of your experiences by completing only the ‘Message’ box of the feedback form on our website’s Home page.

Be in the loop and receive updates from BetterCareScotland today!

Love and Peace!

 Posted on June 18, 2022 by

 Accountability, Adult Social Care in Scotland, Better Care Scotland, Care Homes for Older People in Scotland, Care Inspectorate, Care Inspectorate Scotland, Care Needs, Care Plan, Free Personal Care Allowance, Governance, Human rights, Public Sector, Risk Management, Scottish Local Authorities, Social Care Regulation

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One woman tells her story … #2

Of misplaced trust. Of bureaucracy & cover-up. Of a social care system paying lip service to the needs of Scotland’s most vulnerable.
Extract II: this great age!

I was 96 years old and locked-up in a care home when the abuse began so, although I may have wanted to run away – flight was out of the question. In any event, my instinct is to stand up to bullies, so fight it was!

I could not identify my abuser or abusers, I could give the Police officers only a description of the uniform worn and confirm that it would happen when I was in my room, most likely during the night. Nor did I recognise the voice from its menacing tone. I had not looked at my abuser’s face. When they asked me why, I explained that I didn’t think a human being capable of such cruelty so I dared not look up for fear of finding myself staring into the eyes of the Devil. That was a measure of my fear. The Police officers made notes. I was old enough to be their granny. I wondered what on earth they made of it all.

When they asked me if my abuser or abusers could have been male, my son excused himself and left the room. He returned just a minute or so later and apologised; he’d needed some air, he said. He told me later he’d been caught off-guard by the question. Without wishing to be cruel but needing him to question his assumptions – I may, in fact, have said ‘misconceptions’ – I told him that I will never be able to reveal the extent of the abuse. As he stared out of the window, I reflected that my words were heartless and that I felt oddly unmoved as I watched him breathing heavily.

I had assumed myself invincible but I began to see I’d been an easy target for my abuser. This bothered me. There were many times over my ten decades when I was aware of my own mortality, experiencing loss and hardship, from which at times I thought I would never recover, but had survived despite it all. It’s what we do! I think there’s some logic there! I confess I may have thought myself worthy of respect at this great age so may have invited the abuse despite being raised to expect nothing from others.

I saw that the very characteristics that made me a target – my quiet and shy nature; that I am polite and respectful – qualities my parents taught me to value, had exposed me to abuse by people with quite different standards, made me an open invitation, perhaps, to someone inclined to abuse. And, although I do not nor have ever consciously regarded myself as vulnerable on account of my sex or great age, I imagine that my abuser likely thought otherwise.

Unable to identify my abuser, despite being aware today that it must have been one of the night staff, I felt I could trust no-one and withdrew into myself. Mercifully, my change in mood went unnoticed as the care home owner had taken in three high-needs residents, each of whom needed one-to-one, 24-hour care, leaving just two out of the usual contingent of five carers, to work twelve hour shifts without breaks ministering to the various care needs of the rest of us.

When taking in these unfortunate high-needs residents, the care home owner deprived the rest of us not only of the care he was in business to provide but also of what I considered to be the home’s most valuable resource, the dining room, since he had turned that over for use as a ‘ward’ for the new high-needs residents and the carers who sat with them. I never met these poor souls who would spend the next eighteen months or so closeted in the former dining room.

Like me, my fellow residents also missed the dining room but, from my perspective, while it had ensured that I got some exercise each day getting there and back for meals and provided opportunities to socialise, I did not begrudge the high-needs residents its use – none of us did. Nor did I fail to see that its loss allowed me to occupy an armchair for days on end further reducing the likelihood that I would inadvertently interact with my abuser. What luck!

When our enthusiastic activities coordinator was incapacitated and unavailable for six months, the volume on the television sets was turned up and we were left to our own devices. Pure and unadulterated neglect at a time just when I needed to be left alone. I could scarce believe my good fortune!

For days on end I sat undisturbed in this manner. However, although this arrangement suited me, it happened to suit also the hard-pressed day carers, with the unfortunate consequence for me that, on days when they failed to toilet me, I would know to dread the arrival of the night carers and what lay in store for them … and me.

If my luck was in, the night carers would allow me to sleep in the armchair I’d occupied all day rather than toilet me. But, on nights when they insisted, despite my protestations, that I had to go to bed, I could expect my abuser to appear and exact revenge for increasing the workload, standing over me hissing “filthy bitch”.

My son came most days and took me for trips along the coast. He would chat as we drove along, asking me how I was, how things were, but I preferred to sit quietly catching glimpses of the sea between gaps in the hedgerows and speaking only to reminisce. With the care home so under-resourced, often we would take with us one or two of my more able fellow residents. Even the most junior member of staff seemed to have authority to grant us permission. I wondered if the staff would notice if we failed to return or if anyone but I had considered the legal implications were we to roll off the coast road and into the sea. I suspected not on either count!

The current manager was a family friend of the owner and recently retired, with no experience whatsoever of caring for the elderly and infirm. With my head down, I would watch her from under my brows. I could tell that she missed nothing – and, that she lacked empathy. Once, I saw her reduce Peggy’s son – a respected solicitor – to a blithering wreck when he arrived to find that his mother had been hospitalised. I could see, however, that this manager respected my son for he never failed to look her straight in the eye.

She happened to be ‘available’, it seems, just when it was discovered that the previous manager of several years was not qualified for the post, was “unfit” in the jargon, so had to go. Within a short time of her arrival, the new manager organised the admission, without reference to the existing residents or our family members, of the unfortunate high-needs residents I mention, and did so for the sole purpose of lining the owner’s pockets according to staff who, like us, the existing residents, were disadvantaged by the decision.

Our activities coordinator claimed she’d heard the new manager telling the care home owner that he wasn’t making enough money out of us and that she’d fix it. And, fix it she did!

The care home owner, a socially-inadequate man in his early forties, was rarely in evidence and would run for cover whenever a visiting relative appeared so my son took his concerns about understaffing and under-resourcing to the local Council’s chief executive for the home was largely Council-funded. The chief executive showed no interest whatsoever even though frail residents were falling over and suffering bruises and fractures like never before, bearing testament to the risks – had they been recorded and reported to higher authorities.

The Council’s disinterest would be the deciding factor in my quitting a care home which merits the warning “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!” My ‘eventual’ discharge from that place, I’m told, could have been handled within the space of a week but took the Council five months to organise, during which period, they continued used to dispense largesse with my dwindling modest life savings for the care provider ‘s benefit.

My social worker, whose approach to her duty to safeguard my safety and welfare seemed to require her to chat about her new house and garden and her love of mid-Century design, was candid that my experiences would evoke little sympathy as I had lived to tell the tale. As an observer at close quarters of how my Council treats vulnerable citizens, and realising that social care is something the Council does ‘to’ people rather than ‘for’ them, I had already worked out for myself that, by surviving, I had given the Council work to do.

Quite how much work my blurting out over supper, in the warmth of my son’s home, that I had been abused would become apparent with time. As would the lengths to which the Council would go to silence me! And my determination to ensure that no other vulnerable care home resident in Scotland would share my experiences.

For the Council’s stonewalling of my son’s concerns would lead, just seven months later, to the abuse of at least three vulnerable older women and the bullying of female care staff by a man who, despite his criminal conviction for smashing his wife’s head against a brick wall in a public place, was employed by the care home owner – and kept in post even after these incidents of abuse – to provide care to his residents.

Given the silencing of my disclosures of abuse, it should come as no surprise that Executive Officers of the Council would assume the freedom to diminish the ordeals of these women and deceive elected representatives in order to avoid the need for an investigation. This is social care in modern Scotland!

BetterCareScotland finds that the care provider in question deprived his care home residents of a valuable resource and exposed them to the risk of understaffing by taking in three high-needs residents without reference to the residents or the residents’ family members.

The Council in question did not verify that the care provider would meet the care needs of the 3 high-needs individuals in addition to those of existing residents, several of whom had complex care needs. The Council’s response mirrors its disinterest when concerns were raised by family members.

BetterCareScotland finds social workers working for this Council expressing a long-held frustration that the Council takes this care home owner on trust.

The Care Inspectorate expressed no interest.

Subscribe to BetterCareScotland and receive by email further extracts of this brave woman’s compelling story and the stories of other subscribers whose concerns are stonewalled by public bodies entrusted with social care delivery and regulation in Scotland!

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“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” … Maya Angelou

Love and Peace!

 Posted on June 18, 2022 by

 abuse, Accountability, Adult Social Care in Scotland, Care Homes for Older People in Scotland, Care Inspectorate, Care Inspectorate Scotland, Care Needs, Disclosure, Governance, Human rights, Risk Management, Scottish Local Authorities

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One woman tells her story … #1

BetterCareScotland fights for social care reform in Scotland - Better Care Scotland

Of misplaced trust. Of bureaucracy & cover-up. Of a social care system paying lip service to the needs of Scotland’s most vulnerable.
Extract I: being silenced

“They would pull my nipples and laugh!” I was sitting at the kitchen table in my son’s flat. “They thought it amusing!” My son stared at the newspaper in front of him but said nothing. Despite his clear discomfort, I couldn’t bring myself to stop: “They would pull them right out to here!”, gauging from memory the extent of the affront. My son looked up and stared at my tired, old hands.

He did not look into my eyes or search my face. He knew what he was hearing was true: he’d had sufficient doubts about the competence of the care home owner and the new manager to know that he had to “rescue” me, as I describe it – and, so, just days after my 99th birthday, had whisked me away from the god-forsaken place where I’d funded my care for three years and five months. Over those final five months, the social care department had dragged-out a discharge process, which let the local Council continue to dispense largesse with my modest life savings for the benefit of the inept care home owner!

Now, as I spoke, my son was reliving all those times over the past three years when, on visits, I would tell him I was frightened but clam up when he asked me why. Out of fear, I had dared not tell him.

I had survived the ignominy of being bathed by gauche girls, completely unprepared for the task, who covered their embarrassment by pulling my nipples and laughing uproariously. I do not blame them. And I had survived without a cup of tea for comfort whenever I couldn’t sleep for I took seriously the hardened night carer’s threat to “pee” in it as punishment for being a nuisance. I needed no second warning.

I had survived being strapped to the bed to stop me reaching for the panic button and disturbing the night staff and had banished my teddy bear to the back of the wardrobe after they said he would bite me if I didn’t do what I was told. I had struck up an unlikely friendship instead with a large seven-legged spider who lived under the sink in the loo and emerged every morning without fail to look at this strange sobbing creature towering above it.

I had recovered from the fractured pelvis I sustained from rough handling, shall we say, and the consequent weeks of painful physiotherapy all of which went undocumented and, I believe, unreported by the care home – whatever difference that would have made – and had sat without company for days on end whenever fellow residents chose to sit alone and depressed in their rooms nursing their own unexplained bruises and fractures.

I had even survived the physical consequences of the powerful chemical cosh they administered daily to keep me sedated. And, after my escape, I had quickly regained my mobility, was no longer daytime-incontinent nor, after a great deal of TLC and regular visits to the GU clinic, any longer “prone” to urine infections, the care home’s leaving gift to me.

I survived for I did not give in, did not abandon hope, nor react like the kicked dog which tries to please its abusers. I refused to relinquish my pride despite knowing that this would likely do me no favours and, instead, took comfort in things that reminded me of the life I’d had … pieces of studio pottery and paintings my son had brought … and I developed coping mechanisms, refusing to let my abusers win. But, I did not survive unscathed. I am damaged goods and I have come to trust no-one so I dare not drop my guard.

My GP says the routine chemical cosh is likely to have lasting psychological effects from which I may never recover and to take things one day at a time and not to worry that I may not be as amiable as I was. And, I think of the thousands of others in my position – elderly and no longer self-reliant – and how they are being treated in the time left to them in care homes owned by people whose moral standards are never questioned.

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” Maya Angelou

I did not assume that life in a care home for older people would be as meaningful as the life I’d led or that giving up my independence and the family home would be without its issues. But, taking my lead from Diana Athill, a contemporary who threw caution to the wind and took up residence in a care home in 2010, I had expectations of a place befitting the price I was expected to pay and not the squalid, poorly-resourced, and (latterly) badly-managed place to which my social worker directed me. I could not have imagined that, in modern Scotland, an individual with no demonstrable interest in care, would be able to preside over my neglect and abuse and, like some latter-day Victorian husband, have me declared insane. This in an age when, in wider society, anyone who leverages power over another would be condemned rightly as predatory.

But, dreadful though my treatment was at the hands of this individual, my story is prompted by the response of the local Council which helped him to evade investigation by Police Scotland officers (who were non-judgemental and treated me with humanity and respect, for which I thank them), then added insult to injury by going out of its way to launder his reputation while denigrating me. And, I find myself trying to rationalise the lengths to which the Council went to silence and further abuse me for reaching out … and I wonder why, what purpose it serves. There surely has to be a reason. My local Council does not run itself. Like every other, it is run by people and the people who run my local Council have closed ranks against me. They see me as a threat to them in a personal sense! I’m aware of their desperation!

As I tell my story, I think of those others whose degrading abuse and neglect in care homes for older people went or will go undiscovered as would mine had I left the care home in the manner to be expected by its owner and staff rather than sentient and in a wheelchair. For, this is an industry that can bury its mistakes … quite literally! And, I hope that, by lifting the lid on my own experiences, I can help to ensure that those who are motivated to abuse people in under-resourced care homes for older people and Council staff who turn their backs when people reach out will be denied the opportunity to imagine that their crimes will go undiscovered.

Over three years have passed since I asked the Council chief executive respectfully, in the time left to me, to account for the Council’s role in the cover-up of my disclosures of abuse and since she replied, “I note what you write!” before throwing the matter to her attack-dog, the staff she can rely on to get me off her back. My son has unearthed more than enough to persuade me that the Council chief executive’s only incentive is to cover up my abuse.

I need to shout louder! Wish me luck!

So many red flags!

A woman with the courage to speak out being silenced by those in positions of power!

Subscribe to BetterCareScotland and receive by email further extracts of this brave woman’s compelling story and the stories of other subscribers whose concerns are stonewalled by public bodies entrusted with social care delivery and regulation in Scotland!

If you have a story that you need to tell and you would like to discuss it with BetterCareScotland, please feel free to get in touch with us by email.

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” … Maya Angelou

Love and Peace!

 Posted on June 7, 2022 by

 Adult Social Care in Scotland, Care Homes for Older People in Scotland, Care Inspectorate Scotland, cover-up, Disclosure, Governance, Human rights, Scottish councils, Social Care Regulation, Social Work

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