GLORIA'S LAW

daresbury1978

A new legal right to a Care Supporter

You may be aware of the serious concerns that arose during the Covid pandemic relating to the severe and painful visiting restrictions imposed by  care home services which undermined the rights of and opportunities for resident service users to enjoy close personal contact with loved ones (friends and family). The "party gate" scandals which gave rise to Boris Johnson's premiership resignation directly reflected that public pain and distress.

A number of campaigning organisations e.g. "Rights for Residents" and "Residents and Relatives Association" (now combined as "Care Rights UK") have fought strongly to try to protect what is essentially the right of service users to a private life.

"Gloria's Law" emerged from this campaigning and is now part of a parliamentary process led by Dan Carden M.P. to persuade the House of Commons to create in law a new legal right to a care supporter. If you are able to I would recommend that you watch Dan Carden's speech to the House of Commons some months ago in which he argued extremely well the case for change. Thus{

https://youtu.be/IUVs9oQ9MtM

(I had to use "control plus click" and then "Browse YouTube" to bring it up!)

The speech is only about 15 minutes long. The "Carers Bill" is due for its second reading on Friday 24th. November 2023. Basically, the aim is to create:

(1) A legal right for a person who needs care and support to unrestricted in-person support from at least one essential Care Supporter (a person important to them such as a relative or friend), in private if the person chooses, and

(2) A duty to facilitate contact

A duty on the health and care system, including providers, to facilitate this contact wherever the person is receiving care and support, and regardless of how it is funded (such as hospitals, mental health facilities, care settings, when receiving care in their own home).

The underlying concerns which have given rise to this activity related to the "at risk" older population resident in care home or hospital settings but my justification in bringing it up on this site is because I believe, and know from very hard and challenging personal experience in recent years that disabled individuals in care home settings can and do  face the same limitations on their right to receive visitors. This is a very serious undermining of their basic rights and in my judgement amounts to abuse. Urgent change is needed!!

What do you think?

JessieJ

Thanks for putting that up, @daresbury1978 , on Googling, I found out what it is. Here's a quick link... https://www.carerightsuk.org/glorias-law

This link is for a petition that's going on...

(Changed to tiny url because of the length of link.) https://tinyurl.com/39xsynyf

After what we've all just been through, then, yes, IMHO, they should pass legislation.

daresbury1978

Hi Woodbine and JessieJ! Thank you for your comments. I did write a longish narrative to go with the heading "Gloria's Law" which seems to have disappeared from this page! I am grateful to you JessieJ for adding the link to Carerights UK where those interested in the matter will certainly find plenty of helpful information. I had included a link in my own narrative to the video of Dan Carden M.P. who has a lead role in steering this matter through the required parliamentary processes towards the hope for legislation and I will now include it again. Thus:  https://youtu.be/IUVs9oQ9MtM.

 This is a YouTube video and to bring it up I had to use "control plus click" to bring up the YouTube site and then click onto "Browse YouTube" to bring up the Dan Carden video. Hope that works for you!  Dan Carden's speech in the House of Commons took place in October last year, I think, but there will be a “Second Reading” of the proposed Bill on 4th. November 2023. 

I will also add below some pieces of information about the proposed legislation which I hope might help. Thus:

A new legal right to a Care Supporter

A legal right for a person who needs care and support to unrestricted in-person support from at least one essential Care Supporter (a person important to them such as a relative or friend), in private if the person chooses

A duty to facilitate contact

A duty on the health and care system, including providers, to facilitate this contact wherever the person is receiving care and support, and regardless of how it is funded (such as hospitals, mental health facilities, care settings, when receiving care in their own home)

Enforcement by the regulator

The exercise of the duty on health and care providers to be monitored and enforced by the regulator

Limitations on the ability to place restrictions

Restrictions on this right to only be permitted where it is necessary to protect from a known and immediate risk of harm from the care supporter (they are infectious or for safeguarding) and must be proportionate to that risk.

Individual assessment

An individual assessment must be carried out when considering a restriction on this right, involving the person and those important to them.

Agreed alternate forms of contact

Where a restriction on this right is necessary and proportionate, an individual assessment must take place to agree alternative means of contact with that person and an alternative care supporter for private in-person contact.

Whilst I do share your view JessieJ that legislation should probably be passed I think that the idea that the human rights of disabled people, over which the disabled people's movement has fought hard for decades, is now so much under threat that we need to create new laws to try tp protect them. Clearly, the determining factor in recent years which has introduced such severe threats to disabled people's rights in social care settings (for the elderly and vulnerable in particular) has been the Covid "lockdown" movement but this only really landed onto what was a less than satisfactory situation already in place i.e. the severe imbalance of power in social and healthcare settings between service users and service providers. The place of Lee Court residents in the history of the disability movement in England is extensively recorded and it drew attention to the problems relating to distribution of power which seem to be back.

Have you read about the newly emerging problem in care home settings labelled "revenge evictions"? Seemingly thousands of vulnerable and elderly care home residents (six thousand at last count) now face threat of eviction because either they, or a "loved one" (e.g. family member) have raised some kind of concern about the care they have been due, but maybe allegedly not received,  in the care home. The "Rights for Residents" campaigning group did their best to draw the attention of key organisations (including CQC) to the fact that "visitors" to care homes and the residents were too afraid to complain. 

I am very conscious that so much of the background to the proposed new legislation does relate to the "vulnerable elderly" but I believe that the same  developing threats to human rights applies potentially with regard to the disabled. I can quote from my own situation. I have been doing my best to support disabled care home resident friends, who have cerebral palsy, since the late 1970s. Over the 40 or so years since we first met I have been pleased to find that, until about four years ago,  my access to them had been very open and welcoming. I believe that my friendship has been of importance to them with regard to many aspects of their "right to a private life". I am committed to supporting the human rights of the disabled partly because I am also a disabled person. However, when I went to visit them last year I found, within minutes of my arrival, that I was surrounded by Police who threatened me with arrest and imprisonment if I didn't move away. At the age of 85 and with a 76 year old wife who has supported my involvement with my friends throughout we are now too afraid for me to try to visit them again. Is this not absolutely appalling? What do you think?

Hope, Woodbine, that what I have now just written helps. Do feel free to comment further should you wish to.