Aged care denies basic rights of citizenship
Senior industry figure says elderly people are denied the basic rights of citizenship in aged care
HammondCare ’s CEO, Dr Stephen Judd has called on people who work in aged care settings to demand that the rights of citizenship be upheld for elderly people.
Dr Judd told delegates at HammondCare’s 8th Biennial International Conference on Dementia that the rights of older citizens in Australia are being eroded by a protective disciplinary culture that denies them the basic freedoms of citizenship.
He said older people are denied freedom of choice and decision making control in relation to basic aspects of their lives including daily schedules and activities, freedom of movement and even choice of food.
“At home we have the right to smoke, have pets, get fat and have sex if we want; but in aged care facilities we become captive in a controlled environment where we are ‘protectively disciplined’,” said Judd.
“Shouldn’t we be able to have the small aspects of our life considered?” Judd asked. “Whose schedule is it? Whose choice? I might like to sleep until eight or nine and have soft poached eggs on toast for breakfast. I’d like to think I could get out on the golf course. I don’t want to conform to a set schedule and set activities decided for me without my wishes and choices being considered and I wouldn’t put up with it.”
Dr Judd said aged care programs often conceived the elderly person as a subject to whom actions and ideas are applied, rather than as a person with an individual history, habits and beliefs and distinct likes and dislikes.
“We describe ‘wandering’ in a person who has dementia as a symptom of the disease rather than a sign of distress and our focus is on stopping the ‘wandering’ rather than stopping the distress that is causing the wandering!”
He described as futile many of the regulations under the vulnerable person’s food safety scheme applying to aged care kitchens.
“There is this locational determination with so-called high risk foods so that the resident can be denied soft cheeses and pate and soft-boiled eggs and certain seafoods, even salads in the facility but can go off on an excursion and go to a café and eat whatever they like.”
Dr Judd said there were four things he would like the people who work in aged care to find the will to do.
“Firstly challenge yourself and your organisation,” he said. “Take a good look at schedules and activities and ask yourself, do they focus on the person or the task?”
“Secondly, challenge external forces, the regulators and assessors. Know the regulations better than the regulators themselves. Don’t comply if you believe that it does not respect the rights of the older person and engage the regulators about it.”
The third request Judd made was to engage with research about aged care regulation.
“We demand evidence based research for everything else; isn’t it time we had some evidence based research about aged care policy and regulatory frameworks? What works, what doesn’t?”
He referred to Braithwaite and Makkai’s 2008 book, ‘Regulating aged care: ritualism and the new pyramid’ which says that the pursuit of precision in standards is a symptom of regulatory failure. “This is especially depressing since the pursuit of precision itself is doomed to fail.”
“Finally, we must engage with older citizens themselves and their representative consumer groups to ensure their rights are not being infringed.”
