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Posted By Merv Newman
Quote from The Daily Telegraph, October 21, page 18 Health and Wellbeing. James le Fanu, Doctor’s Diary.
“… yet another idiotic health and safety ruling – that the doors in care homes must be kept closed at all times. “
According to the article this includes doors into resident’s rooms. Which is said to be causing distress as some like to keep their door open “as a window on the world”.
The articles ends – “Any suggestions as to how to combat this ignorant heartless bureaucratic diktat would be much appreciated”.
Can anyone supply the history and justification of this ruling ? Is it a one-off local authority or are we all shooting ourselves in the foot again ?
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Posted By John Webster
Unfortunately, newspaper reports have a tendency to sensationalise one side of a story, and not even the dear old Telegraph is immune from that. There is nothing in the article to identify the "ruling" it refers to, and the author has made no attempt to verify or investigate the claims before commenting, so I suspect the truth is rather different, and as usual some ogre called "Health & Safety" is getting the blame.
Residents have a right to privacy. Some care establishments have had a "policy" of keeping residents' doors open because it makes supervision with limited staff easier, whether the resident wishes to have the door open or not. It could be that an audit or inspection has rightly criticised the practice, and the right to privacy is now being over-zealously applied.
Alternatively, it is also possible that the room doors are fire doors. If so, and the home is not equipped with appropriate Automatic Fire Detection equipment linked to door closers, the local Fire Officer may have clamped down on the illegal practice of wedging them open.
I cannot imagine anything else which could have lead to that situation, though it would be interesting to hear from anyone in Hampshire who has some knowledge of the true circumstances.
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Posted By Merv Newman
John
thanks for your response, and I fully agree about journalistic sensationalism. However, we are getting a bad press again. And I dont like it.
The article referred specifically to room doors. No reference to fire doors in the article. I can understand the fire officer recommending that fire doors remain closed at all times, even though standard practice (in hotels) is to close fire doors around about midnight. I can accept different circumstances for a care home.
Is some overzealous illiterate bullying twit giving us all a bad name that we do not need ?
the author of the article asked for help in combatting the ruling. Can WE as the safety professionals help him ?
Merv Newman
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Posted By Zoe Barnett
Hi Merv
You might remember that a while back I stirred up a bit of a flap by asking if IOSH could do something to stem the flow of "It's Health and Safety Gone Mad" stories. A very nice lady from IOSH's PR section said she'd try to do something about it so maybe this would be a good time for her to start? Maybe a letter to all the papers - or an ad campaign - pointing out that we're actually quite sane and sensible people?
On a more positive note, I've just received a letter from a mum whose child was hurt at school after some horseplay went wrong - this family have written in to say that their son was old enough to know better and it serves him right! Never thought I'd see the day...
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Posted By Grant Hutchison
Merv
The residential care of the young and old to me is becoming more prescreptive in terms of legislation rather than what we in our field strive to promote, self regulation. Yes, we need inforcement, but we are dealing with human beings. We know that the most difficult aspect of health and safety is that of human behaviour.
Presently, in the Caring profession, we have inspections twice yearly by the Care Commission, Envirnomental Health inspections approxiamently every eighteen months, Fire Oficers reports and in some cases Police security reports. On top of this, we as Health and Safety professionals carry out inspections/audits or a regular basis.
I just wonder if with regards to the above if the same imput was given to construction sites would it reduce the death rate.
I have been employed in this sector Merv for eight years, and I am no Social Worker, but the frailtay of older people I have seen within our residential care homes no wonder their own door is left open. Not just for social inclusion but also due to the fact that they do not the strength to open they door in an emergency.
Merv, last thing sorry to be so long winded.
Grant
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Posted By Andy Petrie
If a door is to remain closed at all times, how do you get through it?
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Posted By Ken Taylor
This does not appear in HSG220 (Health and Safety in Care Homes). However, it would not appear unreasonable for the fire authority to ask for all fire doors to be closed at night (even if fitted with magnetic holders) and some doors to residents rooms may well be fire doors. In practice, it may be judged reasonable for the fire doors of certain residents to remain open subject to additional protective measures such as constant supervision being present and based upon risk assessment.
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Posted By Chris Abbott
It's typical, journalists always sensationalise one specific item from an entire range of legislative doctrines and use it to knock the entire industry - bet the apology (if it warranted one) wouldn't be on the front cover... I can't make an opinion on whether there is a need or not, as I have never worked in a care fraternity - but it's feasible that Fire would be considered the reason why this action was deemed necessary.
Either way, this kind of PR will cause the general public to speculate on the motivation of the tabloids and the perceived hindrance and general bad press that Health & Safety seems to get these days - rather than the reason behind why the decision was made in the first place....
All we try to do is keep people safe, no one seems to remember that these days.... Sad really....
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Posted By Jez Corfield
Merv,
There is nothing more that can be said about the press, their approach is 'bad news sells'.
And we have established that there are no safety rules requiring doors to be locked, whether doors are left open or closed should be based on a risk assessment of safety, and on the care needs of the individual.
There will be times when doors should be closed, and other times when they can be left open. Ultimately the desires of the service users need to be considered alongside the safety requirements of each premises. Dr Le Fenu is obviously unaware of this, and as the national safety advisor for the National Care Standards Commission, I intend to bring this to his attention.
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Posted By Linda Westrupp
Hi Everyone
It would not surprise me to find that this has come from an over zealous Care Standards Inspector most of whom do not seem to have had any training in H&S but all of whom seem to have strong opinions. In our case the local Fire Service have insisted tht all residents room doors are self closing fire doors, which of course, now means that many residents are unable to get in or out of their rooms as they cannot open the doors! In fact we have 3 recorded fractures (one wrist, one lower arm and one hip) directly attributable to these doors.
It is possibel that a Care Standards Inspector has seen the self closers and insisted that the doors must be kept closed as they are fire doors.
We have many residents who feel 'shut in' if their doors are closed so have fitted these with 'Dorgards' - battery operated props, as we couldn't afford to fit every door (14 homes with 46 rooms each) with 'wired' in systems.
I do think it is about time that IOSH started to challenge these 'oh look, its that H&S bunch again' and also time that we (professionals in this field) started to chellenge all of the various inspectors so that our residents and service users still get some choice as well as dignity.
But perhaps I am asking too much?
Linda
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