Institutional abuse and Evictions of Care Home Residents

Doug Paulley made this Freedom of Information request to Swindon Borough Council

The request was partially successful.

From: Doug Paulley

25 June 2010

Dear Swindon Borough Council,

1) Please supply information relating to the incidence of attempts
by care providers to evict residents in care homes - that is, care
providers giving residents notice to leave or otherwise attempting
to get them to leave without their involvement in the decision or
against their wishes.

Please indicate the number of cases you are aware of for the last 3
years, also indicating if and how your council responded to the
situation, and what was the ultimate result of the sitaution, i.e.
if and how the situation was resolved.

2) Please provide me with the number of instances your council is
aware of where either CQC or local authority safeguarding
procedures have substantiated allegations of insitutional abuse of
a Leonard Cheshire social care service user over the past 3 years.

Further, please provide anonymised information on the alleged
behaviour by Leonard Cheshire resulting in the conclusion.

Yours faithfully,

Doug Paulley

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From: Customer Services
Swindon Borough Council

25 June 2010

Thank you for your email which has been forwarded to the FoI office for response.

Kind regards

Customer Services
Swindon Borough Council
Wat Tyler House
Swindon SN1 2JG
Phone: 01793 445500

E-mail: [Swindon Borough Council request email]
Website: www.swindon.gov.uk

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From: Sally Jansen
Swindon Borough Council

25 June 2010

Dear Mr Paulley

Ref Freedom of Information Request ref 101000218843

Thank you for your request for information regarding Institutional abuse
and Evictions of Care Home Residents dated 25^th June 2010 and received in
our office on 25^th June 2010:

Under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, the Council has a
duty to respond `promptly' or no later than 20 working days, which in this
case is 23^rd July 2010.

If you have any queries please contact me as detailed, quoting the above
reference number.

Yours sincerely

Sally Jansen ([email address])

Freedom of Information & Data Protection Coordinator

Adult Social Care / Safeguarding & Corporate Parenting

Swindon Borough Council

Tel: 01793 466824

Web: www.swindon.gov.uk

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From: Sally Jansen
Swindon Borough Council

21 July 2010

Dear Mr Paulley

Ref Freedom of Information Request ref 101000218843

1) Please supply information relating to the incidence of attempts by care
providers to evict residents in care homes - that is, care providers
giving residents notice to leave or otherwise attempting to get them to
leave without their involvement in the decision or against their wishes.

Please indicate the number of cases you are aware of for the last 3 years,
also indicating if and how your council responded to the situation, and
what was the ultimate result of the situation, i.e. if and how the
situation was resolved.

I have consulted with the Contracts Team, Care Managers and the Mental
Health Programme Manager and understand there are occasions when a
provider may give notice on an individual for a number of reasons e.g. no
longer able to meet the needs of the individual, home changing
registration category, behaviours of an individual, behaviours of family
members etc. In any event, the local authority would expect registered
homes and any staff involved to fully take into consideration the rights,
views and wishes of the service user and their families. This will include
consideration of the use of advocacy and for all those involved to act
within the best interests requirements of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (if
the service user is assessed as not having the capacity to make this
decision for themselves). If this is the case the Mental Capacity Act 2005
also sets out the conditions where an Independent Mental Capacity
Advocate should be instructed in relation to a change of accommodation.

We currently don't have any operational reasons to collate information
with regards to the number of instances where notice to leave is given,
therefore, we do not hold the information in the format requested. To
answer your question we would need to extract the information from our
records, which would require searching through our client files on a case
by case basis. We currently have at least 766 permanent and temporary
clients in residential and nursing care homes and therefore responding to
your request would take us well beyond the free Local Authority time
limit . The appropriate limit is specified in regulations and for Local
Government is set at £450.00. This represents the estimated cost of one
person spending 18 hours in determining whether the Council holds the
information, and locating, retrieving and extracting the information. If
you wish us to issue a fees notice concerning this part of your request
please get back to us.

2) Please provide me with the number of instances your council is aware of
where either CQC or local authority safeguarding

procedures have substantiated allegations of insitutional abuse of a
Leonard Cheshire social care service user over the past 3 years.

Further, please provide anonymised information on the alleged behaviour by
Leonard Cheshire resulting in the conclusion.

There are no known instances.

I trust this information will satisfy your request, however, if you are
dissatisfied with the service you have received in relation to your
request and you wish to make a complaint or request a review, you should
contact:

Customer Services

Civic Offices

Euclid Street

Swindon

Website: [1]www.[Swindon Borough Council request email]

The complaints/review procedure involves a full review and an examination
of all the information by the Council's Monitoring Officer.

If you are not content with the outcome of our conclusion, you may apply
directly to the Information Commissioner's Office for a decision, before
contacting the Council. Generally, the ICO cannot make a decision unless
you have exhausted the Council's own complaints procedure. The Information
Officer can be contacted at:

The Information Commissioner's Office,

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Email: [2][email address] <[3]mailto:[email address]>

Tel: 01625 545700 (ask for Freedom of Information)

If you require any further information concerning this, please contact me
as detailed, quoting the above reference number in any future
communications.

Yours sincerely

Sally Jansen ([email address])

Freedom of Information & Data Protection Coordinator

Adult Social Care / Safeguarding & Corporate Parenting

Swindon Borough Council

Tel: 01793 466824

Web: [4]www.swindon.gov.uk

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From: Doug Paulley

21 July 2010

Dear Swindon Borough Council,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of
Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Swindon Borough
Council's handling of my FOI request 'Institutional abuse and
Evictions of Care Home Residents'.

I wish to appeal the first part, where you say that providing
information on people in care homes given notice or subjected to
attempted eviction without their will over the last 3 years would
be too expensive to provide.

I dispute this on two grounds.

1) The request has been refused on the basis that it would take too
long to extract information from records. I dispute that this would
be necessary.

Where attempts are made to evict residents in care homes against
their will, it is an event that is likely to escalate and to stick
in peoples' minds. Indeed it tends to make the news, for example:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6599155.stm

A simple query to the head of adult social services for each area
would therefore likely yield the required results without a manual
search. For the avoidance of doubt, the results of such an informal
information gathering exercise would be more than satisfactory to
me in answering my question.

To assist in narrowing down my request, I am not interested in
cases where homes have closed or changed registration, or where
residents are moved on with their agreement or with support of
family due to increased needs that the home can't meet. I'm much
more interested in "unreasonable" evictions or termination
attempts.

2) I have made the same Freedom of Information Request to every
council in the country. Whilst not all results are yet in, lots of
councils have provided the same information for their area very
promptly and without any apparent difficulty.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is
available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/in...

Yours faithfully,

Doug Paulley

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From: Sally Jansen
Swindon Borough Council

27 July 2010

Dear Mr Paulley

Thank you for your email dated 21st July 2010. This has been passed to me
by the Freedom of Information Officer who has requested that we review the
response sent to you regarding information on people in care homes given
notice or subjected to attempted eviction without their will over the last
3 years.

We note you have narrowed down your request and we are currently
reviewing the information. In accordance with the Act, we have a further
20 working days in which to respond to your complaint / revised request,
therefore the deadline will be Wednesday 18th August 2010; however, we
will endeavour to resolve this matter as soon as possible.

If you are not content with the outcome of our conclusion, as advised the
complaints/review procedure involves a full review and an examination of
all the information by the Council's Monitoring Officer.

You may apply directly to the Information Commissioner's Office for a
decision, before contacting the Council. Generally, the ICO cannot make a
decision unless you have exhausted the Council's own complaints procedure.
The Information Officer can be contacted at:

The Information Commissioner's Office,

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Email: [email address] <mailto:[email address]>

Tel: 01625 545700 (ask for Freedom of Information)

If you require any further information concerning this, please contact me
as detailed, quoting the above reference number in any future
communications.

Yours sincerely

Sally Jansen ([email address])

Freedom of Information & Data Protection Coordinator

Adult Social Care / Safeguarding & Corporate Parenting

Swindon Borough Council

Tel: 01793 466824

Web: www.swindon.gov.uk

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From: Sally Jansen
Swindon Borough Council

18 August 2010

Dear Mr Paulley

Thank you for the attached email, the contents of which I note. I have
passed your request on to the Corporate FOI Officer as requested, but
before we institute the full review process, I have also been in
consultation with John Hughes, Head of Services, Social Care Policy and
Strategy for the Adult Services Division, to see if we can resolve this
issue.

Taking in to account your explanation of `reasonable notice', it is
difficult for us to identify any unreasonable situations: We have strong
and effective relationships between residential providers and our
Contracts and Commissioning team. The team has embraced the monitoring
role that Local Authorities have been given, and have assisted homes to
improve performance and raise standards. These positive arrangements make
it difficult to identify unreasonable use of Notice to Quit (NTQ) as
notice is usually in the knowledge of Adult Social Care and is always
dealt with in a problem solving approach which can enable a range of
outcomes rather than a fixed pathway.

Therefore, we would need to conduct a case by case search of our records
to answer your request. I hope this clarifies why this would take us
outside of the 18 hour limit and why we consider it would not be possible
to rely on peoples' memories. There is no guarantee for example that there
has not been a change of staff or that the information compiled in this
way would be in any way accurate.

If you are not satisfied with our response and you require a formal review
to take place please contact the Corporate FOI Officer at the following
email address: [1][Swindon Borough Council request email]

Yours sincerely

Sally Jansen ([email address])

Freedom of Information & Data Protection Coordinator

Adult Social Care / Safeguarding & Corporate Parenting

Swindon Borough Council

Tel: 01793 466824

Web: www.swindon.gov.uk

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From: Doug Paulley

18 August 2010

Dear Sally Jansen,

Thank you, I acknowledge your email.

I myself am in a situation whereby notice was given without my
involvement or the Council's involvement either (and, in my view
and the Council's, unfairly). All hell broke loose - safeguarding
investigations, CQC / Charity Commission investigating, etc. Given
what you have described from your working relatinoship with clients
and service providers, I should imagine that your council would
have reacted in a similar way, and that therefore we can safely
assume that this hasn't occurred in your council area?

Yours sincerely,

Doug Paulley

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From: Sally Jansen
Swindon Borough Council

8 September 2010

Dear Mr Paulley

Thank you for your reply. We feel we have stated our position in our
previous email. I trust you accept our response.

Yours sincerely

Sally Jansen ([email address])

Freedom of Information & Data Protection Coordinator

Adult Social Care / Safeguarding & Corporate Parenting

Swindon Borough Council

Tel: 01793 466824

Web: www.swindon.gov.uk

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Things to do with this request

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