Difference between revisions of "Six Pressing Issues when Living in Residential Care"

In everyday language, the terms such as “abuse” and “neglect “ or “mistreatment” loosely refer to a wide range of negative behaviours, actions or inactions in residential care by staff, administration or others that can undermine the residents’ dignity, or cause them physical, emotional or financial harm. “Neglect of a resident” as the public often thinks of the term may also refer to substandard care, including poor housekeeping, hygiene concerns, delay of treatment, ignoring or slow response to call bells, lack of help with to the washroom, being forced to use incontinence products, inadequate pain treatment, insufficient staffing, poor nutrition, and residents going without a bath for weeks.  It can sometimes take extreme forms as well, e.g. a resident lying in urine and feces for extended periods of time, a resident who is malnourished or who develops pressure ulcers due to lack of appropriate care.

Emotional abuse can show up as the usual forms seen in the community, such as yelling and threatening the person. However, there are special forms that show up in residential care that are either intended to personalize, humiliate or degrade the person, or use power and control over the resident. These forms of emotional abuse include, for example if a staff member, operator or other person working in the facility

* belittles the resident when  the person’s clothing or incontinence brief is wet or soiled;  

* makes fun of the resident’s mental or physical disability;   

In the residential care regulations,  the terms “abuse” and “neglect“ have very specific meanings. These focus exclusively on harms to “persons in care “ (residents) by people who are “not persons in care“ (staff, administration, volunteers, family, strangers).

The abuse definitions specifically exclude harms by residents to other residents. These resident to resident harms are also considered important care issues and are “reportable” to Licensing; they are simply recognized as having different causes and needing different responses than do abuse or neglect situations. ([[{{PAGENAME}}#References|25]])