Brown said what happened there was “not an isolated failure – it was the predictable outcome of a safeguarding system that does not enforce its own rules”.<\/p>\n
“We support the introduction of the Adult Protection Bill. The need for this legislation has been clear for many years,” he said.<\/p>\n
“As far back as 2014, following failures at Cherry Tree Care Home, the commissioner for older people called for stronger adult protection.<\/p>\n
“More than a decade later, families are still describing the same failures, the same gaps, and the same harm.”<\/p>\n
The Adult Protection Bill is designed to protect people who may be at risk of harm and is currently at committee stage.<\/p>\n
Brown told MLAs the bill needed to be strengthened in four areas if it was “to genuinely protect vulnerable adults”.<\/p>\n
He said these related to the use of CCTV, culture, independent advocacy, and training, investigations and adherence to procedures with proper oversight.<\/p>\n
Brown said the core problem was not a lack of policy, but the absence of enforcement, oversight and accountability.<\/p>\n
There needed to be statutory oversight of the safeguarding process, which was not currently a function of the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA), he said.<\/p>\n
Brown urged MLAs not to let the bill “become another promise without protection”.<\/p>\n
Catherine Fox from Action For Muckamore said the bill needed to ensure in law that poor culture “cannot survive”.<\/p>\n
She said the new law was “an opportunity to hardwire a safeguarding culture that protects people, listens to families and supports staff who do the right thing”.<\/p>\n
“If culture is not addressed properly in this bill, the same behaviours will continue, even under a new framework,” she added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brown said what happened there was “not an isolated failure – it was the predictable outcome of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-386858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}