Hard times for the el­der­ly in some geri­atric homes for the aged.

Six cas­es in homes were re­port­ed to po­lice to in­ves­ti­gate crim­i­nal in­tent, three homes have been closed, 30 oth­ers are in “ex­treme con­di­tions of non-com­pli­ance” and out of 217 such homes reg­is­tered with the Health Min­istry, on­ly one is li­censed.

Worse, out of the un­li­censed homes, nine re­ceive state fund­ing.

These and oth­er “eye-open­ers” were pro­vid­ed by So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Health Min­istry of­fi­cials who were grilled yes­ter­day by Par­lia­ment’s Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Paul Richards, head­ing the JSC, re­peat­ed­ly ex­pressed shock over some rev­e­la­tions. Say­ing the el­der­ly is a very vul­ner­a­ble group, he added that the State has to set bench­marks for stan­dards of care. He said cul­tur­al change is al­so need­ed if fam­i­lies are “shuf­fling off” rel­a­tives to geri­atric homes.

Health Min­istry per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Asif Ali said many homes for the el­der­ly lack li­cences. Their data­base shows of 217 homes, on­ly one of which is li­censed.

“That should be shock­ing for T&T!” Richards de­clared, adding they were break­ing the law.

Health Min­istry’s Bee­sham See­taram said the min­istry wrote homes warn­ing of breach­es and 37 re­spond­ed to reg­is­ter and ap­ply for li­cences—in the last two days.

So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry in­spec­tor Gashiya Si­wa­ju (Di­vi­sion of Ag­ing) said nine un­li­censed homes re­ceive state sub­ven­tion.

She said scores of com­plaints were re­ceived from about 66 homes which were in­spect­ed. Thir­ty of the 66 cas­es were re­solved with­in a month as the di­vi­sion couldn’t sub­stan­ti­ate abuse claims. But homes are be­ing reg­u­lat­ed for oth­er non-com­pli­ance is­sues.

Si­wa­ju said six cas­es sub­mit­ted to the po­lice are cur­rent­ly re­ceiv­ing at­ten­tion. She said di­vi­sion per­son­nel were ac­com­pa­nied by po­lice on vis­its re­gard­ing those cas­es and po­lice in­di­cat­ed crim­i­nal in­tent was ev­i­dent.

She said po­lice ad­vised them that one mat­ter was re­cent­ly closed but no crim­i­nal charges were laid. No crim­i­nal charges have been laid against any ser­vice provider, own­er, em­ploy­ee(s) in 2017-2018, she added.

Si­wa­ju said her di­vi­sion vis­it­ed the homes in­volved in the six cas­es and iden­ti­fied in­stances of mis­treat­ment of el­ders and ne­glect; in­stances verg­ing on hu­man rights abus­es.

The res­i­dents in ques­tion were sent to hos­pi­tal for as­sess­ment and then to de­cant­i­ng cen­tres. Some were tak­en by rel­a­tives and oth­ers to homes where con­di­tions were bet­ter.

Si­wa­ju said three of the homes were closed but the min­istry lacked the abil­i­ty to know if they’re op­er­at­ing from oth­er ar­eas. A num­ber of homes where ev­i­dence of com­plaint could not be found are be­ing mon­i­tored. She said 33 per cent of homes the di­vi­sion in­spect­ed were non-com­pli­ant with the ma­jor­i­ty of reg­u­la­tions for stan­dards of care, while about 30 homes are in “ex­treme con­di­tions of non-com­pli­ance.”

Min­istry tooth­less to act

In one case, the min­istry re­moved a res­i­dent but rel­a­tives were up­set and felt the min­istry had dis­rupt­ed the sit­u­a­tion. She ad­mit­ted, how­ev­er, that the min­istry has lim­it­ed pow­er, even to en­ter.

“Some car­ers/care­givers don’t even know they’re abus­ing res­i­dents and that their rights are be­ing vi­o­lat­ed. Things like bar­ring them from the phone or rel­a­tives. Some think it’s fan­cy when, in fact, it’s ba­sic hu­man rights. They feel they’re fol­low­ing or­ders so train­ing is need­ed at man­age­ment lev­els. In­ef­fi­cient man­age­ment makes for poor­ly run homes,” Si­wa­ju said.

“The homes that rent prop­er­ty par­tic­u­lar­ly can­not com­ply with phys­i­cal re­quire­ments such as screen pri­va­cy for res­i­dents. But the biggest gap is the cul­tur­al shift in T&T where peo­ple are placed in sub­stan­dard homes by rel­a­tives who’ve seen the homes; here we see a shuf­fling off of care. Ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing are need­ed. We al­so need full pow­er to do this in a re­al way be­cause we’re mak­ing do now. It’s in­suf­fi­cient.”

On a St James home which the JSC pre­vi­ous­ly found to have housed men­tal­ly ill and young in­mates among the el­der­ly, Si­wa­ju said that home didn’t get a gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tion and no crim­i­nal charges were in­volved there. But it was non-com­pli­ant with changes for safe­ty and sup­port.

Ali said he wasn’t aware of that is­sue.

The mat­ter in­censed JSC mem­ber Glen­da Jen­nings-Smith, who queried why the two min­istries were giv­ing “ex­cus­es”.

So­cial De­vel­op­ment deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Den­nis Williams said procla­ma­tion of law em­pow­er­ing rel­e­vant agen­cies to bet­ter su­per­vise homes is ex­pect­ed by June 2019.

Re­view of reg­u­la­tions will be com­plet­ed in De­cem­ber. Three out of five man­u­als for homes will be ready by Jan­u­ary 2019 and the oth­ers are en route. Stan­dards for safe­ty will be dis­cussed with stake­hold­ers in Feb­ru­ary and build­ing codes are with the Plan­ning Min­istry.

Health’s Ali agreed both min­istries’ re­la­tion­ship need­ed strength­en­ing and be more “re­sults-based.”