Care and respect is key to preventing mistreatment

A culture of care and respect is key to preventing the mistreatment of older people in health and social care services.

Comic Relief and the Department of Health recently carried out a major research programme looking at institutional care and the steps that can be taken to help prevent the mistreatment of staff, residents and patients.

Key findings

The report showed:

• many care staff face work-related stress with some frontline staff facing real risk of physical harm or verbal abuse.
• older people are receiving good and excellent care in hospitals and care homes – but their care can suffer from lack of resources and time pressures.
• abuse and neglect does occur, usually from the results of poor organisational systems and practices, and risks from environments not suited to frail older people.
• staff at all levels, and in particular in the NHS, show disrespectful and patronising attitudes towards older people.
• the way a care home or hospital treats its staff is vital to a strong culture of care.

Visit Preventing Abuse and Neglect in Institutional Care for OIder Adults to find out more about the findings and recommendations.

Andrea Sutcliffe, our Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care, said, “CQC’s role is to set clear standards, assess performance, identify improvements, take action where care fails people and importantly, to celebrate success.

“As well as being tougher in response to breaches to the quality of care, I want to inspire care services to strive to be outstanding, and to continuously improve their standards. I am encouraged that the report offers some positive and practical suggestions for how we can work together to help prevent such abuse, neglect and poor practice from emerging in the first place.”