Behind closed doors

Full Story:
http://www.stopinjusticenow.com/News_0430.htm
Society still needs to come to terms with abuse of older and disabled people. Do we need a shake-up of complaints and investigation? Chris Mahony reports
Child abuse was once Britain's guilty secret. It may have taken 25 years of introspection, but we have broadly come to acknowledge its nasty reality. Now there is a growing sense that the abuse of vulnerable adults occupies a similar, half-concealed place in our national self-image.
The evidence is starting to mount. Research funded jointly by the Department of Health and the charity Comic Relief, and published in June, estimated that 342,000 people aged 66 or over were last year victims of abuse in their own homes, ranging from financial fraud to emotional abuse and even assault. The number of victims is more than the population of Leicester and equates to 4%, or one in 25, of all older people living in the community.
The research, carried out over two years by the National Centre for Social Research and King's College, London, was based on interviews with 2,000 people. It excluded those with dementia and those living in care homes, lending credence to a report in the British Medical Journal as long ago as 1992 which estimated that 500,000 older people were suffering abuse at any one time. Yet in the intervening 15 years, notwithstanding the efforts of campaign groups such as Action on Elder Abuse, which made the case for the new research, the issue has remained relatively low-profile and low-priority.
One aspect of this has been the emphasis - or lack of emphasis - placed on complaints of abuse of older and disabled people. In this context, the health secretary, Alan Johnson, may have been interpreted as donning a hair shirt at last month's Labour party conference when, speaking about yet another shake-up of regulation in health and social care, he reassured delegates: "The new regulator will have a much stronger focus on safety and quality across all health and adult social care services."
Elaborating on the minister's words, a Department of Health spokeswoman says: "There has been a lot of talk about this over the last 10 or 20 years and he was acknowledging that this [emphasis on safety] has not always been done. There has not always been the focus. Now we want some action, not just words."
No doubt with an eye on this and on the regulatory shake-up that will form part of a health and social care bill, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (Adass) has issued its own, seven-point manifesto on the issue of abuse of vulnerable adults (see box, left). One of the points is a call for social workers to have a right of entry into people's homes, in association with the police, to investigate suspected adult abuse. Another is a requirement on the new regulator to work with local authorities in "identifying and responding to instances of potential abuse and neglect".