Aged care advocates across the country are seething as last-minute amendments that were made to the aged care bill now protect aged care providers from prosecution as long as they agree to comply with a set of constraint guidelines that have not yet been created.
Speaking with The Sydney Morning Herald, elder abuse lawyer Rodney Lewis said that the amendment will now stand as “a formidable barrier” for families who hoped to take legal action against aged care providers who unlawfully restrained their elderly loved ones.
Mr Lewis is currently running a test case in the NSW Supreme Court and seeking damages for the false imprisonment of aged care resident, Terry Reeves, from the operators of Garden View Aged Care.
The inhumane treatment of Mr Reeves was highlighted by the Aged Care Royal Commission who heard that Mr Reeves was routinely left strapped in a restraint chair for up to 14 hours a day – despite Mr Reeves’ daughter only giving permission for two hours of restraint per day, and only as a “last resort”.
Aged and Community Services Australia (ACSA) chief executive Paul Sadler told The Sydney Morning Herald that the providers sought immunity out of fear that discrepancies with state and territory laws may affect the validity of any written consent regarding physical and chemical restraint.
“Otherwise providers and their families were going to be in this invidious position of having to work with a piece of legislation federally that didn’t coincide with what the laws are in the states over who can make decisions about restrictive practices,” Mr Sadler said.
A spokesperson for Aged Care Services Minister, Richard Colbeck, told The Sydney Morning Herald that this immunity would ensure that providers “who may not be authorised under current state and territory laws are protected from civil and criminal liability” if they had prior consent from an authorised person.
There is another face to chemical restraint.
In so many facilities there are brain affected violent residents. This is caused by disease process.
However when not chemically treated these residents are an endanger to staff and other residents as well as themselves.
The attacks and injuries go unreported ( despite SIRS reporting regulation) and the abuse by violent residents goes on. This impacts on many residents daily as well as staff who work in areas of fear with no protection.
If residents who are aggressive and violent and are not therapeutically chemically managed there must be a security guard in all these units.
The public have no idea of the number residents with aggressive mental related disorders who reside in aged care units.
The only time the public react is when thete is a death due to one of these attacks.
Who is responsible and accountable?
There needs to be some common ground, some residents have conditions that are definitely unsociable and aggressive towards staff and other residents.
It’s ludicrous that the current health policy is that if you are living at home in the community then you can have medication to calm you down but they don’t want that in nursing homes.
The situation is getting worse and worse and the risks are unacceptable without intervention. If not medication prescribed by a doctor then where can these folk go?
Spend a day with a highly agitated man or woman and then you would appreciate nursing homes and their staff.
I would not disagree with the assessment of the number of residents in care facilities who have cognitive impairments for many reasons but by housing them in abnormal looking foreign environments with minimally trained staff is the real problem. As has been shown elsewhere if you maintain a recognizable environment such as a real home-like environment for those with cognizance impairments and you attend to the essential needs as outlined by Dr.Allan Powers books, one can safely and near normally live and exist if properly housed and care for.
I have witnessed the ganging up of non-cognitively impaired residents on cognitively impaired residents and it is frightening to watch these kindly old souls become raging screamers. I become frightened just watching it happen. I also watch staff who haven’t the foggiest notion of how to manage someone with cognitive impairments – most General practitioners received no training in geriatric medicine (it is mostly an elective course, and often they don’t even pay much attention as they should to the interaction of medications given to elderly people when clearly the Beers Criteria says you will kill them if you do. There are many sides to this story someone has to tell theirs.
This is completely outrageous. I found my mother lying on a flat air bed with a fractured pelvis. Shortly after this I found her with solid food in her mouth (NB. She was supposed to be on a soft diet.) eyes open and glazed. I could not rouse and she died three days later. I do not forgive nor do I forget.
We live down the road from a nursing home. I often take our dog for a walk past there. This morning I saw a Nursing Attendant escorting a patient to the shops. He was walking about ten steps in front with his iPhone buds in listening to music (?) completely ignoring the patient. It is scenes like this that remind me that abuse takes many forms but that to abuse someone you first have to see them as less than human or less deserving. I hope that Morrison and Co. are voted into oblivion at the next election. We need a kinder community not legal indemnity.
Great insights and comments and very true how we are not attuned to how to properly care for those who need different care and different caregivers. I commented before that the placement of those with cognitive impairments ought not to be with those who do not have these as the natural reaction of those who do not have it is to be afraid and they resort to physical or verbal abuse towards those with cognitive impairments. The government is responsible for placing people in the right care facility or environment – they cannot plead ignorance because they have the ability to source out knowledgeable Authorities such as Dr Allan Power and perhaps read his books or get someone who can read them and summarize for them. There is always a way to solve these man-made dilemmas it is to not keeping making the same mistakes over and over that is hardest to do.
And who decides that Chemical restraining is required ?
An assistant in nursing with no formal qualifications or medical education?
My father was chemically restrained by staff in a facility because he was repeatedly “noisy “. No one thought to investigate the reason behind this. As it was later discovered 3 days before his death,
he had necrotic wounds on the heel of his foot and his coccyx. No one had thought to investigate and there was no documentation of the pressure sores.
Once again Facilities get a free pass to to dish out poor care !
Sue Ann,
To answer your question…doctors and specialists prescribe all medication.
As to the poor nursing care you experienced I can only sympathise.
Sue Ann, to answer your question…only doctors and specialists prescribe medications. They make recommendations based on behavioral circumstances. For example a resident may be aggressive, intimidating, violent or very noisy and are upsetting other residents etc.
It is an extremely difficult procedure to have a resident medicated and prescriptions are based on extensive observation and documentation.
I hope that helps.
This is absolutely cruel and unusual punishment and should make all citizens feel ashamed of how they allow seniors and vulnerable people to be treated as if they were nonhumans?
Too strong I don’t think so. Show me where people are treated as cruelly and I will shown you a country and government that doesn’t not care one whit about older people.
We all know that these “care” homes are built on societies’ attitudes towards “different, non-productive, sick, etc.” and like school yard bullies, the treatment of those “others” is regarded as normal behaviour and they condone it by passing Bills. Government members can’t really be blamed they are after all mostly lay people and they go along with who ever can persuade them to go along with this punishment for being old.
I understand the reticence of some to not speak up or out because they fear funding being cut off but I don’t think they sleep well at night.
Unless aged care is removed from “health care and those associated with them” there will never be a change. All one can say is if this treatment were allowed to happen with crying babies or ill tempered children – would society stay silent? You have to live with this knowledge now that it is in the open.
Restraining residents in locked units because we cannot provide them with adequate care and suitable environments is inhuman. For people who enter those units in a time of crisis there is often no way out even when they can no longer walk. It’s a shame for our society to tolerate this. Having recently transitioned to work in NDIS I am even more surprised about how older people are discriminated against. The difference in resources allocated to an NDIS participant compared to an older person is so unbelievably big. If aged care received similar government support there would be no need for locked units.