Before his promotion the then Care Services Minister, Liam Byrne,
established a new group of
dignity guardians to help him toughen the regulation of social care.
Action on Elder Abuse was identified as one of these new Guardians..
The announcement came as the Minister reached the mid way point of
his series of regional listening events with older people and as AEA
released the results of a government funded project to map abuse of
vulnerable adults in England.
Announcing the new group of dignity guardians at an Action on Elder
Abuse conference at the University of Warwick on Monday 13 March, Liam
Byrne said: "If we are to achieve the ambition set out in our
recent white paper to help people maintain their dignity by being active
and independent, then we need to ensure our regulation and standards are
of the highest quality.
That is why I am bringing together this new group of dignity
guardians. Too often older people are not treated with the
dignity they deserve. We need to tackle poor quality services, not
tolerate them."
The council will report to the Minister ahead of a national
consultation in to changes to the National Minimum Standards in care homes
and the publication of the second phase of the Older People’s National
Service Framework.
The dignity guardians group and listening events are the latest
initiatives in a series of measures designed to drive up standards of care
and tackle elder abuse. These include: the registration of care workers, a
new vetting and barring scheme aimed at ensuring abusers can’t work with
vulnerable adults and giving the Commission for Social Care Inspection new
freedoms to increase spot checks on the worst care homes.
The Minister gave the key note speech at the Action on Elder Abuse
conference, at which the charity issued the results of a project on adult
protection. Local authorities data collection systems were examined and a best
practice template drafted to regularise information gathering on adult abuse. The report found that almost a third of adult victims are
abused in their own home and 20% were abused by a carer, partner or family
member.
