Older People: Health and Social Care

Lord Bishop of Exeter Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

The noble Baroness makes a very fair point. As I made clear last week, our aim has been and remains to legislate in this Parliament to create a fairer, more just and better funding system for social care.

[The Lord Bishop of Exeter]

Given that Delivering Dignity recommends that,

“All hospital staff must take personal responsibility for putting the person receiving care first”,

and that staff “should be urged” to challenge practices that they believe are not in the best interests of residents, what measures have Her Majesty’s Government taken to support staff who whistleblow in this respect?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the right reverend Prelate draws attention to an area that we have focused on quite hard in recent months, and the NHS constitution has been changed to strengthen the areas around whistleblowing. In the care home context, often the care home is looking after someone who is not publicly funded and the arrangements there are often ones that the care home itself has put in place. We believe that the CQC needs to focus carefully on the arrangements in the care homes that it inspects to ensure that staff feel free to speak up if they are aware of any problems of maltreatment or anything of that kind.