Social care in England is undervalued, underfunded and on the brink of collapse. Being old and in care can, for some people, feel precarious. The statistics showing the state of care homes across the UK are sobering. The Care Quality Commission regulator says almost one in four care homes are inadequate or require improvement, while Age UK says 1.2 million people over 65 had some level of unmet care needs in 2016-17.
Public Concern at Work, the whistleblowing charity I work for, believes the care sector could benefit if staff feel able to speak out. With so many care homes rated inadequate or in need of improvement, we believe residents and staff face risk, danger and malpractice. The 400 annual calls to our whistleblowing advice line from the care sector are, we suspect, just scratching the surface of the problems facing care homes. PCaW would like to gain a clearer picture of whistleblowing in care homes, which is why we have launched a survey.
For the past 25 years, our charity has been helping whistleblowers safely raise concerns about their workplace. We help individuals who have witnessed wrongdoing, abuse or poor practice but are unsure how to go about raising these issues. We also work with organisations to help them to instil strong, accessible whistleblowing cultures, and we carry out training, consultancy and organisational reviews when things have gone badly wrong.
Our experience in the health and care sector is extensive. We provided guidance and advice on handling whistleblowing concerns to the Freedom to Speak Up guardians (whistleblowing ambassadors) in NHS trusts in England, training about 350 guardians to help foster a better “speak up” culture in the NHS.
Created as a result of Sir Robert Francis’s review into the failings at Mid-Staffordshire NHS trust, the guardians’ role is to help promote the freedom to speak up in their trust and provide confidential advice and support to staff who have concerns about patient safety and staffing.We also work with Care UK and independent care homes, but our work spans many sectors – including finance, retailing, charities, the environment, local government and education. Our advice line receives about 2,500 calls a year, and its findings should worry anyone working in senior management in the care home sector:
- Care staff are often left unsupported by their employer, with one in three saying their whistleblowing concerns – often a safeguarding or patient safety issue – were ignored.
- More than half of whistleblowers also reported some kind of victimisation, with 23% saying they have been dismissed after raising concerns.
Staff are the eyes and ears of an organisation and can act as an early warning system of potential risk or malpractice. Staff who feel comfortable raising a concern, or whistleblowing, may possibly save lives or complex litigation down the line.
Alerting managers to potential risks, wrongdoing or malpractice long before it becomes a problem is a good thing. Much of our work at PCaW is getting this message across to organisations and encouraging them to not only embrace whistleblowers, but also be grateful for the issues staff raise.
It sounds simple. If it were, PCaW would not need to exist.
This summer, the government is due to publish a much-needed green paper on reforming care for older people, which we welcome. However, until then, we’re very concerned about the issues facing the 1.5 million care home staff in England and those they care for. We can only speculate that the whistleblowing culture in these homes is poor – but we’d like to better informed and taking this survey will help us at PCaW work with the sector.
If you work in care homes, please help us at PCaW to build a clearer picture of whistleblowing and the issues facing care homes in England. Whether you are a care home worker, nurse or manager, we would like to hear your views in our very short survey, which is open until the end of April. The results (email addresses and names will not be captured or featured in this survey) will help PCaW campaign for stronger whistleblowing in care homes.
- Andrew Pepper-Parsons is head of policy at Public Concern at Work
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