Surveillance Cameras
Here's a thoughtful and informed opinion piece from The Guardian (a rare thing these days) in which Ros Coward sets out her thoughts on the many challenges of caring for the elderly.
Now I identified with lots of things in this article because I went through many of the same experiences in organising, first of all, home care for my mother and, latterly, residential care it became impossible for my mum to live on her own.
And while I agree with Ros about improving the pay and conditions of the carers who do these jobs, normally with great affection for their clients, it is extremely important to remember that up to 1200 premature deaths at Mid Staffordshire were not caused by low pay, NHS cuts or a failure to invest sufficiently in staff.
The other point I would make is that the sensitive use of surveillance cameras does not need to be secret or amount to an invasion people's privacy, so long as any recordings are used to review specific issues or complaints, as opposed to someone watching live.
Spying on carers risks damaging the trust we need to raise standards
Cameras in care homes might have a role, but improving pay and conditions would attract and retain carers who believe in dignity for the elderly
By Ros Coward - The Guardian
A scene from the Panorama Special - Undercover Care: The Abuse Exposed. 'Is the solution to use secret cameras to monitor carers?' Photograph: BBC
Finding care for frail parents in their declining years has just been recognised as one of the most stressful decisions we will ever have to make. According to a new Care Quality Commission survey, it is more stressful than getting married or divorced or choosing children’s schooling. Central in this stress is the fear that carers might not just be inadequate but cruel – understandable given recent court cases exposing extreme abuse in care homes. But is the solution to use secret cameras to monitor carers? Or would this exacerbate stress by adding further distrust and creating a surveillance mentality towards work that essentially depends on good and trusting human relations?
While falling short of actually recommending that relatives should install surveillance cameras, the CQC is nevertheless endorsing their use by issuing guidelines for relatives considering such action. Andrea Sutcliffe, the watchdog’s chief inspector of adult social care, acknowledges that this is controversial. Some people, she says, will think of her as the “devil incarnate”, but she defends the guidelines as guidance for those who choose this route.
I certainly don’t think these suggestions are diabolic: they are a legitimate response to heart-breaking cases, like that of 79-year-old dementia sufferer Gladys Wright, whose abuse at the hands of “carer” Daniel Baynes was exposed by a secret camera; and it’s not as if surveillance in public spaces isn’t now routine. But nor can I embrace the move either. Not only does it invade moments of intimacy and privacy, but it also endorses a level of distrust between caregivers and family, and doesn’t offer a solution for raising standards.
My own experiences certainly chime with the idea that finding good care for elderly parents causes incredible stress, and that anxieties about the quality of that care are central. There is terrible guilt involved in handing over aspects of your parent’s care to people who are, at least initially, strangers. They have to be trusted not only to feed your parent, but sometimes to perform intensely personal aspects of care as well as provide the only company they might receive that day. It’s even worse when elderly parents have to be trusted to care homes. My family went through those fears at all the different stages of my mother’s care. Yet in spite of some bad experiences, the abiding feeling now is how many incredible carers we met on this journey. Not people deserving closer scrutiny but greater recognition.
My experience was not buffered by wealth. In her own home, my mother had carers who worked for an agency arranged by social services for both private and social services “clients”. The carers they provided were low paid, often on casual contracts, and usually from immigrant backgrounds with their own family responsibilities. These were women who often travelled between jobs on buses, who were timed by their office for short visits, yet were uniformly kind. When in the last few months my mother went into a care home in Chester, it was not a fancy or expensive place but it was a loving, happy, well-regulated community again staffed by people who gave everything to their jobs.
Of course, I was lucky. But there were other crucial elements that tipped it away from just being chance. Both situations were well-managed; both had managers who had been in the job for some time. In the case of the care home, the manager had been there 30 years. In both cases, there was an ethos of keeping a close eye on the staff – a close eye but not a camera. The staff had been chosen well, too. It can’t just have been coincidence that all of them had strong values of caring and a belief in dignity for the elderly.
Its sounds like a cliche – and a socially costly cliche at that – but the change most likely to end abuse is one that raises the pay and conditions status of those who care for the elderly to the same as that of nursery and primary school teachers. The real area for improvement is for managers to get a grip on their workforce, to select only staff with the right values and to support them in their work. The great carers are the ones whose rewards are more than financial, but decent conditions and pay would retain them and recognise their personal values as socially important values.
In trying to raise standards, trust is more important than distrust. Cameras might have a role, but it would be better if they were used openly as part of a workplace trying to ensure standards rather than as hidden surveillance.
Finding care for frail parents in their declining years has just been recognised as one of the most stressful decisions we will ever have to make. According to a new Care Quality Commission survey, it is more stressful than getting married or divorced or choosing children’s schooling. Central in this stress is the fear that carers might not just be inadequate but cruel – understandable given recent court cases exposing extreme abuse in care homes. But is the solution to use secret cameras to monitor carers? Or would this exacerbate stress by adding further distrust and creating a surveillance mentality towards work that essentially depends on good and trusting human relations?
While falling short of actually recommending that relatives should install surveillance cameras, the CQC is nevertheless endorsing their use by issuing guidelines for relatives considering such action. Andrea Sutcliffe, the watchdog’s chief inspector of adult social care, acknowledges that this is controversial. Some people, she says, will think of her as the “devil incarnate”, but she defends the guidelines as guidance for those who choose this route.
I certainly don’t think these suggestions are diabolic: they are a legitimate response to heart-breaking cases, like that of 79-year-old dementia sufferer Gladys Wright, whose abuse at the hands of “carer” Daniel Baynes was exposed by a secret camera; and it’s not as if surveillance in public spaces isn’t now routine. But nor can I embrace the move either. Not only does it invade moments of intimacy and privacy, but it also endorses a level of distrust between caregivers and family, and doesn’t offer a solution for raising standards.
My own experiences certainly chime with the idea that finding good care for elderly parents causes incredible stress, and that anxieties about the quality of that care are central. There is terrible guilt involved in handing over aspects of your parent’s care to people who are, at least initially, strangers. They have to be trusted not only to feed your parent, but sometimes to perform intensely personal aspects of care as well as provide the only company they might receive that day. It’s even worse when elderly parents have to be trusted to care homes. My family went through those fears at all the different stages of my mother’s care. Yet in spite of some bad experiences, the abiding feeling now is how many incredible carers we met on this journey. Not people deserving closer scrutiny but greater recognition.
My experience was not buffered by wealth. In her own home, my mother had carers who worked for an agency arranged by social services for both private and social services “clients”. The carers they provided were low paid, often on casual contracts, and usually from immigrant backgrounds with their own family responsibilities. These were women who often travelled between jobs on buses, who were timed by their office for short visits, yet were uniformly kind. When in the last few months my mother went into a care home in Chester, it was not a fancy or expensive place but it was a loving, happy, well-regulated community again staffed by people who gave everything to their jobs.
Of course, I was lucky. But there were other crucial elements that tipped it away from just being chance. Both situations were well-managed; both had managers who had been in the job for some time. In the case of the care home, the manager had been there 30 years. In both cases, there was an ethos of keeping a close eye on the staff – a close eye but not a camera. The staff had been chosen well, too. It can’t just have been coincidence that all of them had strong values of caring and a belief in dignity for the elderly.
Its sounds like a cliche – and a socially costly cliche at that – but the change most likely to end abuse is one that raises the pay and conditions status of those who care for the elderly to the same as that of nursery and primary school teachers. The real area for improvement is for managers to get a grip on their workforce, to select only staff with the right values and to support them in their work. The great carers are the ones whose rewards are more than financial, but decent conditions and pay would retain them and recognise their personal values as socially important values.
In trying to raise standards, trust is more important than distrust. Cameras might have a role, but it would be better if they were used openly as part of a workplace trying to ensure standards rather than as hidden surveillance.
