This story reflects the opinion or experience of the reporter and not necessarily the views of Groundswell
Despite being a “legal requirement” for all service providers that deal with vulnerable or troubled people “duty of care”, is a phrase that gets thrown around by the majority of “support and wellbeing services” to make themselves sound good on paper or sound good theoretically. They want to give you that false sense of security to lure you into their trap.
For all these types of services, the bottom line is all about the bottom line. For those who didn’t catch what I did there all it comes down to in the end is funding (money, the bottom line) not so much about the people they’re meant to have the duty of care to.
Due to fairness and confidentiality I’m not going to say the name of the next establishment. The hostel in question is part of a nationwide company that has under its umbrella of support services; hostels (complex needs), hostels (direct access), hostels (low needs). This is just in the homeless sector; they also cater for elderly people through care homes. Also to add to their cv of support givers they cater for severely mentally challenged older people, so psychiatric wards for elderly people, and also regular OAP homes. As a whole the company must be doing something right as they’ve stayed in business for years and years.
This being said I’ve witnessed one of their hostels (high risk) have had fake money put through it from a member of staff, CCTV evidence removed of resident’s drug dealing and staff-resident relationships. That was just whilst I was a resident. There were stories of this thing happening regularly. Eventually towards the end of last year the hostel was shut down – the story is that the building was unsafe. Straight away the building reopened as something different so how was it about the building specs?
After one relationship between staff and a resident came out it was all turned around on the resident who got outcasted by every other agency in the homeless sector due to the “support worker” having friends in other agency’s such as the local doctors, drug agencies, the council and even a prison officer.
That really isn’t duty of care.
HMO’s (house of multiple occupants) are the realist example of the abuse of the phrase duty of care. So it’s my understanding (this is open for suggestion/discussion) that if I had certain qualifications which are easy to acquire and owned my own house or two and register on gov.uk I can brand myself as “supported accommodation” and per room, per week I can claim anywhere up to and maybe exceeding £300.
Supported accommodation have a duty of care by law. However, through personal experience I’ve found that there are no, or very little, conflict resolution skills. I’ve seen people victimised in their own house due to them sharing problems with staff that run these supported accommodations and staff have betrayed that trust. Where’s the vulnerable persons care in all of that?
When people don’t feel safe in their own homes, they tend to just hit the streets and I get it fully as there’s CCTV everywhere and people around so if anything was to happen then someone would know or see.