Watchdog ‘sting’ exposes care failures in homes for elderly

In an operation run by consumer group Which?, actors were sent in to four unnamed care homes in England posing as residents and recording what they found.

In the most extreme instance, one researcher witnessed a carer dragging a resident towards the toilet by one arm, while another resident was pushed back into their chair repeatedly by the head and shoulder when trying to stand up.

The watchdog reported this to independent regulator the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and admissions to the home were suspended immediately.

Which? findings revealed residents were served unappetising meals, inadequate in both nutrition and size, with one researcher reporting a half stone (7lb) weight loss in a single week.

The report also raises concern over the communication and management skills of staff disclosing that in three of the homes, residents “sometimes had to wait 16 or 17 hours between dinner and breakfast without food”.

In one example, an actor reported a lady groaning in pain waited 35 minutes for pain relief because staff were busy completing a handover.

In another instance, a woman was close to tears because she needed the toilet before lunch but was refused with the comment “this is a dining room, not a loo”.

Some of the shortfalls noted in the investigation had been raised in previous CQC reports, but the care homes had failed to improve.

Peter Vicary-Smith, chief executive of Which?, called for tighter measures to ensure care homes acted upon risks identified in reports by the CQC.

“The fact that the CQC had identified some of the same problems in previous inspections is a real issue – clearly, not all care homes take inspection reports as seriously as they should,” he said. “We’d like the CQC to step up its enforcement activities to ensure homes can’t just pay lip-service when action is required.

“Old age comes to us all, and everyone living in a home has a right to expect their most basic needs to be met. Sadly, the homes we visited left a lot to be desired.”

The chairman of the Care Quality Commission, Dame Jo Williams, said: “The evidence Which? shared with us describes care that falls below what people using social care services have a right to expect – in one case so seriously that we acted immediately to ensure admissions to the home were suspended and are now considering the best action for residents currently living there.

“CQC listens to the views and experience of people who use services and look at what data tells us in order to identify possible risks, then reviews and inspects services. Seeing for ourselves what’s going on in care homes is a key part of our regulatory regime and almost all of our visits are unannounced.

“Where necessary, we require improvements against clear timescales or take enforcement action, following up to ensure these improvements have been delivered.”

The residences were investigated by Which? at the start of this year and comprised of two independent care homes and two belonging to care home chains.

In their last inspections by the CQC, one home was rated zero stars, reflecting poor care, two had been given one star, indicating satisfactory care and one had been rated as good with two stars.

The actors recorded their experiences and what they ate, drank and were offered in diaries which were then analysed by a panel of experts.