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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Care workers' abusive behavior to residents in care homes
— a qualitative study of types of abuse, barriers, and facilitators to good care and development of an instrument for reporting of abuse anonymously | | Author(s) | Claudia Cooper, Briony Dow, Susan Hay |
| Journal title | International Psychogeriatrics, vol 25, no 5, May 2013 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, May 2013 |
| Pages | pp 733-741 |
| Source | journals.cambridge.org/ipg |
| Keywords | Residents [care homes] ; Elder abuse ; Personnel ; Paid welfare workers ; Complaints [services] ; Observation ; Instruments ; Attitude. |
| Annotation | Elder abuse in care homes is probably common but inherently difficult to detect. The present study developed the first questionnaire to ask care home workers to report abuse anonymously. Qualitative focus group interviews were conducted with 36 care workers from four London care homes, asking about abuse they had witnessed or perpetrated. The participants reported that situations with potentially abusive consequences were a common occurrence but deliberate abuse was rare. Residents waited too long for personal care, or were denied care they needed to ensure they had enough to eat, were moved safely or were not emotionally neglected. Some care workers acted in potentially abusive ways because they did not know of a better strategy or understand the resident's illness; care workers made threats to coerce residents to accept care or restrained them; a resident at high risk of falls was required to walk as care workers thought that otherwise he/she would forget the skill. Most care workers said that they would be willing to report abuse anonymously. Care workers were sent the newly developed Care Home Conflict Scale to comment on but not to complete and to report whether it was acceptable and relevant to them. Several completed it and reported abusive behaviour. The study concludes that lack of resources, especially care worker time and knowledge about managing challenging behaviour and dementia were judged to underlie much of the abuse described. The authors go on to describe the first instrument designed to measure abuse by care home workers anonymously. Field testing is the logical next step. (JL). |
| Accession Number | CPA-130419217 A |
| Classmark | KX: QNT: QM: QP: QLV: 4AA: YW4: DP |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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