The human rights of thousands of elderly people are not being acknowledged in hospitals and care homes

Elderly 'are being denied human rights' - Observer

Extracts:

"Basic human rights of thousands of elderly people are failing to be acknowledged in hospitals and care homes, an influential parliamentary committee will conclude next week.

MPs and peers on the Joint Committee on Human Rights will call on health managers and carers to be more sensitive to the needs of the elderly. Andrew Dismore, Labour chairman of the committee, said: 'The Human Rights Act is not just about terrorists and criminals. It is also about ordinary people's rights in the way that they are dealt with by public bodies.'

The plight of elderly people in care was highlighted last week by a woman of 103 who was forced to leave a nursing home in a row over funding. Esme Collins, from Worksop, Nottinghamshire, who needs 24-hour nursing care, moved to a new home 10 miles away.

The spectacle of a centenarian having to move home has prompted the government to pledge a change in the law. At the moment elderly people whose care home fees are paid by a local authority - a portion of Mrs Collins's fees are paid this way - are not covered by the Human Rights Act."

"The committee will touch on many issues examined in The Observer's Dignity at Home campaign, which calls for elderly people to be allowed to live in comfort in their own homes."

Care homes 'can evict elderly residents' - Telegraph

Extract:

"Hundreds of thousands of elderly people in private care homes are vulnerable to eviction, abuse and neglect after a House of Lords ruling that they are not covered by human rights laws, according to campaigners.

In a bitterly-fought landmark case five deeply divided Law Lords ruled by a majority of 3-2, that an 84-year-old woman with Alzheimer's disease threatened with eviction from her care home, did not enjoy the protection of the Human Rights Act given to residents of local authority run care homes.

The decision could affect up to 300,000 residents throughout the country who have been placed in private homes by their local authorities.

Nine out of ten care homes in England and Wales are now run by private firms.

Lawyers for the unnamed woman had argued that her threatened eviction from a private home, because of an alleged "irreconcilable breakdown" between her family and its management, was a violation of her right to family life.

But, the Law Lords ruled that a private home was not exercising a public function when it care for people referred to it by a council, and therefore was not bound by the Act.

The civil rights group Liberty condemned the ruling saying urgent legislation was now needed to change the Act to prevent local authorities from "contracting out of dignity for Britain's elderly".
Help the Aged said it was "a sickening blow to older people and their families everywhere" and that it left "vulnerable older people open to neglect, abuse and eviction, without redress through the Human Rights Act"."

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