Care Homes

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

The noble Baroness’s remarks will resonate with many noble Lords. We have been here before. One of the emerging issues from the review is around poor practice on the use of restraint, as she rightly mentioned. CQC inspectors found that only 73% of locations met requirements on physical intervention or restraint. There was ineffective monitoring of restraint data and learning from incidents. Staff were not always trained and restraint was not always delivered in line with the care plan. There are real lessons to be learnt by providers about the use of restraint. We have flagged this up as one of the actions that we will take in the department to work with the Department for Education, the Care Quality Commission and others to drive up standards and promote best practice in the use of positive behavioural support and ensure that physical restraint is only ever used as a last resort. The report published on Monday is an interim report and we will be publishing a final report later in the year.

[Baroness Barker]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that this report calls into question the role of local safeguarding adult bodies? What are they doing now while people are being mistreated in a way that the CQC has uncovered? Does the Minister think that it is time to revisit the legal bases of those organisations?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, my noble friend is right to call that matter into question. My department will be working with the NHS Commissioning Board Authority to agree by January next year how best to embed quality of health principles in the system using NHS contracting and guidance. Those principles will set out the expectations of service users in relation to their experience. We are taking a range of other action—the 14 national actions to which I referred in my initial Answer—which I would suggest my noble friend looks at. We are clear that there is a need not just for providers but for everybody in the system to focus on their responsibilities and to work together to drive up standards in the way that we all wish to see.