“It’s about time care home standards were brought up to be more than just acceptable”
– by Tommy Dunne
“One of the biggest fears that a person with dementia experiences when they are given that diagnosis is being put in a home.
It’s the first thing that goes through your mind, those fears – they raise all the horror stories that have been shown in the media and the stories from family members. I would love to say they’re unfounded, but the truth is, the stories are true. This, of course, is totally unacceptable – that people are settling for average care homes, and that’s because society has such low expectations of care homes: people accept that some care homes are going to be bad, so they will settle for an average one.
Throughout our lives, we demand the best for ourselves and our children; so why do we expect less for our parents, our spouses and our partners?
It’s about time care home standards were brought up to be more than just acceptable.
There must be more unannounced inspections of care homes and some of those inspections should include a person with dementia who is not living at that home. There’s not enough being done to tackle abuse in care homes.
The general public’s attitude and skepticism about whether a person with dementia enjoys a good quality of life in a care home is leading to a failure to drive up standards of care. People with dementia can live well, with a high quality of life of many years, following diagnosis – provided the right care and support is available to them, of course – but there has been a failure to deliver the services and support that people with dementia need to have a high quality of life.
So when a person with dementia reaches a stage where they’re going to be put into a home, that person should feel safe in the knowledge that they’re going to be treated with dignity and their personhood respected. We need the government and care homes to work together to lift up expectations, so that people know that they have the right to demand the very best.”
