Andy Burnham: Jail private care home directors for mistreating pensioners

risingsun wrote:Labour's shadow health secretary pledges to introduce a new charge of corporate neglect under which owners, managers and boards of private care homes could be jailed or fined for ill-treatment of people in their care.

Private care home directors who mistreat pensioners face prison under a Labour government, Andy Burnham has said.

The shadow health secretary pledged to introduce a new charge of corporate neglect under which owners, managers and boards of private care homes could be jailed or fined for ill-treatment of people in their care.

Those rules currently apply only to state homes. In the private sector, which provides 75 per cent of residential care, criminal charges can be brought solely against staff.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Mr Burnham said: “There is a worrying number of very poor providers profiteering off the backs of vulnerable people. Standards are shockingly low, and [the victims] do not have a voice.”

Should Ed Miliband be elected, Mr Burnham confidently expects to serve as health secretary. “Obviously it’s up to him what team he has. But it’s where I want to be, and I know what I want to do.” As the architect of the integrated health and social care service now endorsed by all the main parties, his first focus is on the ordeal faced by many elderly people in residential care and their own homes.

“The standard of social care in England is a national scandal. This urgently needs more attention from Parliament.”

“Proving a case against an individual is very difficult. The new offence would make it much easier to hold whole organisations to account.” In addition, Mr Burnham is proposing to extend to the care sector the protection for NHS whistleblowers recommended by the Francis report on failings at mid-Staffordshire hospitals

“My worry is that abuse is taking place in people’s own homes [by carers]. Whistleblowers have come to me and described a system that basically has no standards any more.”

Five years have passed since Mr Burnham’s wish to fix a broken system with a “death tax” resulted in the Tory tombstone posters that became a metaphor for Labour’s impending defeat.

Post-election, Mr Burnham – who is widely regarded as the most likely successor to Mr Miliband - privately pursued the idea of either a 15 per cent estate tax or some other social insurance scheme before his hopes were finally dashed when the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, told the Daily Telegraph that “people rightly think they pay too much tax already.”

Mr Burnham has now buried the “death tax” and any other revenue-raising plan. “I’ve conceded. My plan is based on the money we’ve got and on making the system work better.” But nor does he think Labour’s ten-year plan is a final solution. “It gets you some of the way. [But] the country hasn’t yet found a way of paying for social care for the rest of this century.”

Eventually, he hopes, political consensus and public demand will enable more radical change. “I am passionate that we should fund all care on the NHS principle – that everybody contributes and everybody is covered .. I can’t see how our party in the end could ever allow a situation where people are ruined financially because of their vulnerability.

“But I’m conscious you have to carry people with you. It’s a longer game .. I’m impatient for change. I feel politics is missing big causes, and it needs to get back into that kind of business.”

then the interfering so and so's want to stop listening to every 2 bit "protest group" and stop playing "the politics of the noisiest" and get back to governing the country instead of regulating every fart and playing the nanny state game....

Late in 2013, Mr Burnham warned that Labour must “shout louder” and that its window of opportunity would soon close. With the opinion polls neck and neck and the public unconvinced, has it all gone wrong for his party?

“I don’t think it has. Here we are eight weeks from an election that we can win, and I think we will. It’s an incredible endorsement of Ed [Miliband] that we are now so close to winning.”

With Labour under threat from the SNP in Scotland, does he agree - as John Major urged yesterday – that Labour should rule out a coalition with the nationalists? “I believe in the union and in Britain, and I wouldn’t do anything that would increase fragmentation. I hope that gives you a hint of where I’m coming from.”

Win or lose, Mr Burnham says he is in politics for the long haul. “I only want to try to achieve substantial things. People are yearning for a politics that is about big solutions and ideas that will make a real difference.”

Does he hope to be PM one day? “Well, I don’t sit here thinking and plotting towards it. Maybe some people do that; I don’t. I’m consumed by what I’m doing at the moment.”

But ambition, we suggest, doesn’t imply disloyalty. “Maybe not. My passion is the Labour Party, and I will serve it in any way I can. I’m not the sort of person who endlessly projects future plans. I will go as far as my talents will allow me.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11455874/Andy-BurnhamJail-private-care-home-directors-for-mistreating-pensioners.html

Fuzzy Zack wrote:Good idea - in principle.

Would also like to see the government pump more money into social care - to help providers maintain standards.

While 75% of care homes may be private, most of the service users' fees are funded by the public. And this was dropped by 10% around 2009, with no inflationary increase since. While wages have had to rise to keep up with the minimum wage.

darknessss wrote:

Fuzzy Zack wrote:Good idea - in principle.

Would also like to see the government pump more money into social care - to help providers maintain standards.

While 75% of care homes may be private, most of the service users' fees are funded by the public. And this was dropped by 10% around 2009, with no inflationary increase since. While wages have had to rise to keep up with the minimum wage.

awww...and there's them "poor" care home providers...who charge on an interesting basis...

lets see mrs XXXXXX you sold your home for 150,000

so we well keep hold of that to pay for your care


3 years later she dies...and mysteriously the WHOLE 150,000 has gone...in costs...

hmmm


and even the honest ones charge ridiculous prices for what is actually provided....


how come a pensioner can be expected to live on £113 per week in their own home

and yet is expected to pay 400+ per week in a "home"  

especially when 90% either need or get any "expensive" care
the standard of which is largely substandard
(cos when you pay peanuts you get monkeys)

tell you what...I aint going into one of those "prison camps"

under any circumstances....

Unless I have gone "ga ga"...


I will take the long sleep before I get stuffed into one of those...

Fuzzy Zack wrote:

darknessss wrote:

awww...and there's them "poor" care home providers...who charge on an interesting basis...

lets see mrs XXXXXX you sold your home for 150,000

so we well keep hold of that to pay for your care


3 years later she dies...and mysteriously the WHOLE 150,000 has gone...in costs...

hmmm


and even the honest ones charge ridiculous prices for what is actually provided....


how come a pensioner can be expected to live on £113 per week in their own home

and yet is expected to pay 400+ per week in a "home"  

especially when 90% either need or get any "expensive" care
the standard of which is largely substandard
(cos when you pay peanuts you get monkeys)

tell you what...I aint going into one of those "prison camps"

under any circumstances....

Unless I have gone "ga ga"...


I will take the long sleep before I get stuffed into one of those...

You obviously don't value the effort nurses put in to take care of the elderly in the UK.

Brasidas wrote:I think many people are looking at this all wrong with care and where we can help our parents we should.
Most people have forgotten the fact we were raised by them and should repay them by looking after them in their later life. We used to do this in the west but now with access to such facilities it is easier to offload the problem onto someone else.
Responsibility should start  with the family itself. Of course not everyone has families and thus we do need facilities, but the ethos around this is all wrong.

darknessss wrote:

Brasidas wrote:I think many people are looking at this all wrong with care and where we can help our parents we should.
Most people have forgotten the fact we were raised by them and should repay them by looking after them in their later life. We used to do this in the west but now with access to such facilities it is easier to offload the problem onto someone else.
Responsibility should start  with the family itself. Of course not everyone has families and thus we do need facilities, but the ethos around this is all wrong.

the whole of society is wrong....


people HAVE to move to find work so children end up 100+ miles away...how are they expected to "help"
Poor base point to use as if this is the norm, when that is not the case. You cannot make an argument based off some, this is off the reality of where people can help their parents.

few people have sufficient room to have a parent (or possibly both parents living in with them)

Really based on what?

fewer still have time with BOTH partners HAVING to work to make ends meet...
Then you make time or pay for a carer where they are happier in an envoironment they are more comfortable with and still have their family around them. Still again you use worse case scenario where people can help and they choose to place them in a home

and corrupt officials in councils are not beyond obtaining care orders to get hold of an elderly persons money, so they can "then "pay it out" at tremendous cost, or indeed ensure that the elderly victim ends up in their "mates" care home....
Silly


society didge...it may have escaped your notice has changed somewhat, mostly for the worse over the last 50-60 years.....
Absurd life has gotten better, what has not is how people now palm off their parents into homes, when they should repay their parents by looking after them

so its all very well you pintificating about what should be, when the other things you chunter on about are in general the very things that have caused this situation...

Well as seeeen most of what you posted above was pure crap, based off some view points as if it was the norm basing it on no evidence

like for instance


"people should move wherever whenever and as often as necessary to obtain work.....that is incompaible with "people should look after their parents" ...for a number of reasons.

Brasidas wrote:

darknessss wrote:

the whole of society is wrong....


people HAVE to move to find work so children end up 100+ miles away...how are they expected to "help"
Poor base point to use as if this is the norm, when that is not the case. You cannot make an argument based off some, this is off the reality of where people can help their parents.

few people have sufficient room to have a parent (or possibly both parents living in with them)

Really based on what?

fewer still have time with BOTH partners HAVING to work to make ends meet...
Then you make time or pay for a carer where they are happier in an envoironment they are more comfortable with (of course that will be totaly affordable on minimum wage wont it.... or worse still folks out of work....) and still have their family around them. Still again you use worse case scenario where people can help and they choose to place them in a home

and corrupt officials in councils are not beyond obtaining care orders to get hold of an elderly persons money, so they can "then "pay it out" at tremendous cost, or indeed ensure that the elderly victim ends up in their "mates" care home....
Silly but true


society didge...it may have escaped your notice has changed somewhat, mostly for the worse over the last 50-60 years.....
Absurd life has gotten better, what has not is how people now palm off their parents into homes, when they should repay their parents by looking after them

so its all very well you pintificating about what should be, when the other things you chunter on about are in general the very things that have caused this situation...

Well as seeeen most of what you posted above was pure crap, based off some view points as if it was the norm basing it on no evidence

and you dont have a clue about life....

like for instance


"people should move wherever whenever and as often as necessary to obtain work.....that is incompaible with "people should look after their parents" ...for a number of reasons.

Again absurd, you move your parents to your home where ever your work is.

eddie wrote:Well in a perfect society it would be nice to have your parent(s) move in with you. This only works, however, if the parent is mobile and able-bodied.
My grandmother got senile dementia (she was a wanderer too) and there's no way my mum could have managed to look after her.

darknessss wrote:

Fuzzy Zack wrote:

You obviously don't value the effort nurses put in to take care of the elderly in the UK.

nurses?

how many are sen or srn then, because anything else is just a "health care professional"

and judging by what we see on a regualr basis the "care" is anything but......

darknessss wrote:

Brasidas wrote:

Again absurd, you move your parents to your home where ever your work is.

what kind of a cabbage are you didge....

what part of "moving home is second only to berevement" in terms of stress dont you understand

you see didge you are a typical "liberalist"....full of "should be's and ought to be's" and not a damn clue as to how or why or by what means

a course in bitter reality might help you....

nicko wrote:Zack owns a care home,has he admitted to that?

Fuzzy Zack wrote:

darknessss wrote:

nurses?

how many are sen or srn then, because anything else is just a "health care professional"

and judging by what we see on a regualr basis the "care" is anything but......

The answer is to increase funding (not decrease it, as it has been). Or as suggested, take care of your own. But some children can't provide the nursing provision to an elderly population increasing suffering from dementia and medical conditions that require constant supervison. Quality care costs money.

Brasidas wrote:

eddie wrote:Well in a perfect society it would be nice to have your parent(s) move in with you. This only works, however, if the parent is mobile and able-bodied.
My grandmother got senile dementia (she was a wanderer too) and there's no way my mum could have managed to look after her.

In many cases people can care for their parents, they choose not to because the easier option is for someone else to do so.
In my book that is wrong.
Many parents riase children thast have a variety of  medical problems, would you say the same if they gave them up for adoption Eddie?

Fuzzy Zack wrote:

nicko wrote:Zack owns a care home,has he admitted to that?

Lol! It's not like I'm ashamed of owning one.

eddie wrote:

Brasidas wrote:

In many cases people can care for their parents, they choose not to because the easier option is for someone else to do so.
In my book that is wrong.
Many parents riase children thast have a variety of  medical problems, would you say the same if they gave them up for adoption Eddie?

No didge. But soemtines the children of the elderly are elderly themselves!
And my mother, for instance, wasn't capalble of looking after an old lady with dementia!

darknessss wrote:

Fuzzy Zack wrote:

Lol! It's not like I'm ashamed of owning one.

that explains his grasping desire for yet more funding....

as if the "charges" levied in general are not highway robbery as it is....


again HOW COME a pensioner can be expected to live on £113 pm in their own accomodation......but get charged way over £400/month in one of these places....

especially when you see how they are run and the slop they feed em and the general disrespect that is visited upon them...

and we ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT THE ODD 1 OR 2 HERE AND THERE are we....this is a regular occurence.....

eddie wrote:

Brasidas wrote:

In many cases people can care for their parents, they choose not to because the easier option is for someone else to do so.
In my book that is wrong.
Many parents riase children thast have a variety of  medical problems, would you say the same if they gave them up for adoption Eddie?

No didge. But soemtines the children of the elderly are elderly themselves!
And my mother, for instance, wasn't capalble of looking after an old lady with dementia!

Fuzzy Zack wrote:

darknessss wrote:

that explains his grasping desire for yet more funding....

as if the "charges" levied in general are not highway robbery as it is....


again HOW COME a pensioner can be expected to live on £113 pm in their own accomodation......but get charged way over £400/month in one of these places....

especially when you see how they are run and the slop they feed em and the general disrespect that is visited upon them...

and we ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT THE ODD 1 OR 2 HERE AND THERE are we....this is a regular occurence.....

Seems your prejudice applies to care homes also.

I suggest you reverse engineer a care homes expense and then see if you could run of at £400/month.

By the way, £400/month is incredibly cheap.(so the reality is much worse than I thought... jeez) My home charges £750 per week for private residents, about £680 to £1200 pw for NHS trusts and £550 pw for council residents. But I have a nursing home. Care  homes are slightly cheaper.  

Fuzzy Zack wrote:

darknessss wrote:

that explains his grasping desire for yet more funding....

as if the "charges" levied in general are not highway robbery as it is....


again HOW COME a pensioner can be expected to live on £113 pm in their own accomodation......but get charged way over £400/month in one of these places....

especially when you see how they are run and the slop they feed em and the general disrespect that is visited upon them...

and we ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT THE ODD 1 OR 2 HERE AND THERE are we....this is a regular occurence.....

Seems your prejudice applies to care homes also.

I suggest you reverse engineer a care homes expense and then see if you could run of at £400/month.

By the way, £400/month is incredibly cheap. My home charges £750 per week for private residents, about £680 to £1200 pw for NHS trusts and £550 pw for council residents. But I have a nursing home. Care  homes are slightly cheaper.  

Fuzzy Zack wrote:

darknessss wrote:

that explains his grasping desire for yet more funding....

as if the "charges" levied in general are not highway robbery as it is....


again HOW COME a pensioner can be expected to live on £113 pm in their own accomodation......but get charged way over £400/month in one of these places....

especially when you see how they are run and the slop they feed em and the general disrespect that is visited upon them...

and we ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT THE ODD 1 OR 2 HERE AND THERE are we....this is a regular occurence.....

Seems your prejudice applies to care homes also.

I suggest you reverse engineer a care homes expense and then see if you could run of at £400/month.

By the way, £400/month is incredibly cheap. My home charges £750 per week for private residents, about £680 to £1200 pw for NHS trusts and £550 pw for council residents. But I have a nursing home. Care  homes are slightly cheaper.  

darknessss wrote:

Fuzzy Zack wrote:

Seems your prejudice applies to care homes also.

I suggest you reverse engineer a care homes expense and then see if you could run of at £400/month.

By the way, £400/month is incredibly cheap.(so the reality is much worse than I thought... jeez) My home charges £750 per week for private residents, about £680 to £1200 pw for NHS trusts and £550 pw for council residents. But I have a nursing home. Care  homes are slightly cheaper.  

and you think those sorts of charges are "justifiable"?

pffft......£3000 per month for private residents??(actually £3250 pm (as there are in fact roughly 4 1/3rd weeks in a month on average)

the whole "industry" should be investigated and "audited" for good value