The UK’s care homes watchdog must “do its job better” in order to protect residents, the leader of the Liberal Democrats has said in an emotional plea.
Sir Ed Davey hit out at the Care Quality Commission (CQC) while speaking on ITV’s This Morning programme as part of a campaign to create a new law, which was launched after ITV News uncovered shocking statistics about abuse and neglect in care homes.
The LibDems leader was speaking alongside campaigner Clare Miller, who wants the government to bring in “Ann’s Law” after her mother who was abused in a care home.
Ann’s Law would create a register for carers, from which bad staff could be struck off, and make the abuse or neglect of care home residents a specific offence.
Viewers of This Morning fought back tears on Thursday after watching footage, gathered via a hidden camera, which uncovered shocking evidence of 88-year-old dementia patient Ann King being abused.
The upsetting images appeared to show Ann being mocked, teased and manhandled at the Reigate Grange care home in Surrey, which she was paying £8,000 a month to look after her.
Clare’s brother Richard installed the hidden camera after noticing their mum appeared to be “absolutely terrified” by her carers and what they eventually saw shocked them.
“It broke my heart, I will never forget it,” she told This Morning.
Despite the horrific evidence, no one was ever changed with a crime. An ITV News investigation in 2023 found just 1.4% of allegations of neglect and abuse at care homes result is someone being charged with a crime.
After discovering how widespread the problem is, Clare – herself a carer of 27 years – teamed up with Sir Ed to campaign for the safety of care home residents.
What happened to care home resident Ann King?
The MP, who is a carer for his young disabled son, said: “I couldn’t be more committed to improving the quality of care for the whole of our country and for the millions of others who are like me, who have their loved ones in the care homes.”
He said the CQC isn’t getting to the heart of the challenges within care homes or addressing the issues fast enough to make change.
“I think it’s about getting the Care Quality Commission in the right place, and hopefully the new head Julian Hartley will do that, but also it’s about making sure we improve the quality of carers to make sure that all of them are really good, and we root out the bad apples.”
He added: “We need Care Quality Commission to do its job better.”
CQC interim Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care and Integrated Care James Bullion told ITV News the watchdog is committed to improving.
“It is essential that when people share concerns with us they’re acted on appropriately and we will continue to push for improvements on how CQC listens and acts on this information. We are working hard to improve our regulatory oversight, including increasing the number of inspections we do to give the public confidence in quality of care.
“Care homes are people’s homes and everyone living there deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, to be listened to, and to be given safe, high-quality care and we will continue to hold providers to account where we find this is not the case.”
In a statement, Signature Senior Lifestyle, which runs Reigate Grange, said: “The behaviour of the individuals concerned was reprehensible and fell far short of the standards of care we provide our residents every day.
“We would like to again apologise to Mrs King and her family, and reassure our community that these actions were committed by rogue individuals.”
Sir Ed Davey demands the government brings in Ann’s Law to protect care home residents
The Liberal Democrats leader said the carers crisis continues to get worse because of a lack of support and required qualifications.
He said Clare’s idea with ‘Ann’s Law’ is “to have a registration of carers so it can just improve the overall quality and make sure people have that, not only are they not abusing their people they’re looking after because that’s the baseline…But you’re actually giving really quality care that you would give to your loved one.”
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He added: “We’ve never really valued care or carers. We don’t treat family carers properly and don’t give them support when they’re struggling, and we don’t value care workers. We register nurses and we register midwives, we don’t register carers.”
“You can go into a care home and look after a vulnerable person, someone with disabilities, an adult with learning disabilities or an elderly person with dementia and you don’t have to have any qualifications or you’re not registered… I think that’s wrong.
“We don’t pay them enough and we don’t accredit them enough and we don’t make sure it’s a really well qualified profession, and I think that undersells care workers. I think they are some of the most amazing people in our world actually, doing an incredibly tough job.”
ITV News has contacted the government about calls for Ann’s Law but the Department for Health and Social Care has not yet responded.
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