Sir, – I read with interest your editorial entitled "Residential care – a regulatory gap" (October 8th) and must agree that adult safeguarding legislation for adults who may be vulnerable is sorely overdue. However, if legislation alone is the only measure taken to address the issue of safeguarding then we will simply be trying to fill a bottomless bucket.
Nobody is inherently vulnerable and nor is it disability or older age that causes vulnerability, rather it is the circumstances that we find ourselves in which creates vulnerability.
One of the reports into the Áras Attracta revelations noted that “while some people were kept safe, many could have been supported to keep themselves safe”.
Institutionalised models of care with a focus on protection over-capacity building and a reliance on medicalised and paternalistic systems, such as is found in congregated settings and nursing homes, create fertile ground for abuse to occur. When individuals are segregated, have their finances and medical care managed for them, have no access to independent advocacy and are not supported to engage in their community, then we are creating vulnerability.
Merely inspecting and recording the abuses that take place will not address the culture change that is required to prevent abuse from occurring in the first place.
A move from institutionalised services and towards self-determined and personalised services in the community is required, and if our continued reliance on institutionalised models of care and support continues, there will be no let-up in the escalating numbers of safeguarding concerns. – Yours, etc,
SARAH LENNON,
Communications
& Information Manager,
Inclusion Ireland,
The Steelworks,
Foley Street,
Dublin 1.