25 January 2015

Still auctioning off older people

Another authority, this time Kent County Council, has been reported to be using the ‘eBay’ style bidding system to find care placements for vulnerable older people.  Back in August last year, the Guardian revealed Birmingham City Council’s use of this system and that Matrix SCM was the company promoting and selling the software to councils.  According to their marketing manager, they were in talks with 30 other councils about using the system. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/aug/27/councils-care-contracts-online-auctions

Auctioning off older people’s care in this way is, like ‘bed-blocking’, reducing older people’s experiences to a mechanistic approach.  Not only does it ignore the need for personal contact with care home staff, it reduces people to little more than a catalogue of disabilities and vulnerabilities.

This increase in cost driven auctions of care home placements by local councils challenges the current mantras about focusing on the individual. It also makes a nonsense of genuine choice and consultation.  Instead of placing the older person at in the centre of their care, it introduces a dehumanising process which could result in poor and dangerous placements for older care home residents.

This system of allocating ‘care’ could result in someone being placed far away from family and friends.  It could also lead to devastating isolation and loneliness and clearly highlights an institutional failure to put the needs of the older person first.  It may well also be in breach of the person’s human right s and their need to maintain family relationships.

 John Lister, of the campaign group Health Emergency, condemned the system in the Guardian: "Local authority care budgets have already been slashed to the bone, there's nothing left to cut. This system is auctionyourgranny.com, it's a race to the bottom," he said.

The R&RA has become increasingly worried about this new auction style system taking hold and being used by more and more councils.  At a time when ‘person centre care’ is the buzz word in social care, older people continue to get a raw deal, and are now being treated as little more than commodities to be traded on auction sites.