[ad_1]
A new report from the Health Information and Quality Authority has found that many residents with disabilities who live in congregated settings experience a poor quality of life compared to those who live in community settings.
Inspections of 1,268 centers last year found that residents in congregated settings were often separated from their local communities and continued to live in inadequate outdated accommodations.
The report also outlines concerns about poor performance in relation to governance and management in a number of settings.
However, HIQA says that inspectors found there was higher compliance in key areas such as protection and social care at all centers since 2018.
HIQA is responsible for the registration and inspection of ‘designated centers’ for people with disabilities.
Centers vary in size from single occupancy to large congregated institutional settings.
For more than ten years, efforts have been made to move people with disabilities from congregational settings into community life.
This has proven difficult due to adequate financing and the housing crisis.
There are residents in congregated settings who are frustrated by how long they have been waiting to move into the community.
However, for other residents, the suggestion to move into the community fuels anxiety according to some disability representatives.
Some people who have spent most of their adult lives in congregated settings.
The latest HIQA report compares the two types of settings and there is no doubt that those in the community do better.
HIQA inspectors visited 1,268 centers last year, 70% of those visits were unannounced.
In well-run centers, residents told inspectors how they liked to spend their time and about activities or people that were particularly important to them.
The list of hobbies and interests in these settings was varied.
However, in some congregated settings, Resident’s Day was primarily focused on campus activities that HIQA reports were further constrained by staff shortages.
Issues related to the impact of poor governance and staff shortages are peppered throughout the report.
In some cases, providers did not have a clear idea of what was happening in their services and routinely did not adequately identify deficiencies in the quality and safety of their services.
Inspectors found that residents in 20% of the settings were still at risk of abuse due to failure to meet basic protection requirements.
They report that the vendor governance arrangements at many of these centers did not guarantee that claims of damage were reported and investigated to a satisfactory level.
In some cases, staff did not acknowledge safeguarding incidents due to their frequency, suggesting that the culture of the center was used to or had a higher tolerance for such events.
The report also says that in centers where safeguard concerns were reported, inspectors found that management had failed to ensure that effective plans had been put in place to mitigate the events.
Last year was the first full year of inspections since the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities entered into force here in April 2018.
The purpose of the convention is to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity.
As citizens, people with disabilities living in designated facilities have the same rights as other members of society to live the life of their choice and to access the resources they need to do so.
Residents who moved into smaller group homes consistently told HIQA inspectors that they were happier and had a better quality of life compared to when they lived on campus or in congregated settings.
The authority says more work is needed to ensure that one in three people living in congregated or campus settings need more work to ensure they are supported to move to smaller homes in the community.
“This is to promote the personal freedoms and the control over their own lives to which they are entitled,” he says.
Inclusion Ireland seeks more funding for group homes
Inclusion Ireland, the national association for people with intellectual disabilities, has expressed concern about the findings.
The organization said it is not the first time that HIQA has encountered a poor quality of life “imposed on thousands of people with disabilities” who live in congregated settings.
Its executive director, Enda Egan, called on the government to accelerate the deinstitutionalization of people from congregated settings to community homes.
Inclusion Ireland said there is a need for the Department of Housing to have additional funding for “physical housing”.
The association said this will allow people with intellectual disabilities to enjoy a “normal life” in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
[ad_2]