No food, water or medication: The grim reality of home 'care' for the elderly exposed in an undercover probe
BBC reporter Arifa Farooq went undercover as a carer for the 2009 Panorama expose Britain?s Homecare Scandal. Here she relives her experience and lays bare the horrifying truth about the industry.
I tried to treat him in the most dignified manner I could, but it was so difficult that I had to keep ringing the company office, asking for more support. Yet all my calls kept going through to an answering machine. It is an episode that haunts me to this day.
This disgrace was exposed this week by a new report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which revealed how many elderly people are let down by the home care system run by local authorities ? their visits curtailed, meals not provided and washing inadequate.
Others have been abandoned in soiled bed sheets and clothes, or told to choose between being fed or washed.
Care is dominated by profit-making companies, with independent providers now controlling 70 per cent of the market. The sector is said to be worth at least ?1.5***8201;billion and is growing all the time, due to the ageing British population.
Shameful: Dementia sufferer Janet Finn, 89, was left on her own for 24 hours without food, water, and had to sit in her own excrement when her care visits were skipped for one day in June 2008
In a civilised society, the impulse of compassion should be the driving force behind the care of the elderly. Those who have given so much to our society deserve to be treated with respect and dignity in their final years when they are at their most vulnerable.
The maltreatment of older patients in NHS wards and the home care revelations and recent scandals over abuses in residentiol homes is not new to us, we need a regform.
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