Inspectors find non-compliance with standards at local centre for people with intellectual disabilities

A new inspection report has revealed that residents at a local centre for people with intellectual disabilities complained of “multiple incidents of peer-to-peer verbal and physical abuse”.

B Middle Third is a community based semi-independent residential house in Ballygall operated by St. Michael’s House.

The designated centre provides services for residents with an intellectual disability and other needs. Residents are supported to become as independent as possible whilst living here.

A Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) inspection of the premises found that not all the incidents among residents were notified to the chief inspector as required by the regulations or to the local safeguarding team.

According to the inspectors, the safeguarding documentation and records in the centre were not adequately maintained.

Many incidents were not recorded on incident report forms but were typed by staff and stored in a separate folder.

Some of these were not signed or dated.

This meant that practices around incident recording and reporting were inconsistent.

The impact of this was that the provider was unable to adequately assess the frequency and impact of safeguarding events.

Where incidents of abuse had been reported, the provider had implemented safeguarding plans.

However, these were ineffective as peer-to-peer incidents of abuse continued to occur on a regular and more frequently occurring basis.

Residents spoke about the impact of abuse on their wellbeing and described times when they had to isolate in their bedroom or leave the centre due to abuse.

The impact of abuse on the residents was documented by staff, with one resident having informed staff on multiple incidents that they ”can’t cope anymore”.

This resident told staff that they were very hurt and that they felt that nothing was being done about the abuse.

“There was evidence that the provider was aware of the abuse as far back as February 2021 when a multi-disciplinary meeting documented safeguarding and resident compatibility issues,” the inspector writes in the report.

“A more recent multi-disciplinary (ICM) meeting in January 2022 stated that the peer-to-peer incidents constituted possible domestic or psychological abuse with elements which were controlling or coercive.

“In spite of being aware of the abuse, the provider had failed to discharge their responsibility to safeguard residents.

“The impact of this was that residents were subjected to incidences of peer-to-peer abuse which were distressing to them and impacted their rights over a prolonged period of time.

“The provider’s safeguarding plan set out that a strategy to reduce peer-to-peer incidents was to review the housing arrangements and support one resident to live independently as per their assessed needs.

“However, there was an absence of a comprehensive transition plan which was discussed, safe and agreed with the residents and their representatives.”

The report also found that residents’ privacy and dignity in respect of their personal relationships was not respected with residents stating they were unable to receive visitors.

Additionally, the privacy and dignity of each of the residents was impacted by one resident frequently being asked to assist the other residents with personal care and activities of daily living.