NPM monitors: Private homes for seniors should be regulated, not closed

The activity of private homes for senior citizens and persons with disabilities (geriatric institutions) is not regulated, and their exact number is unknown.

This was stated by the monitors of the National Preventive Mechanism (NPM), the Human Rights Information Centre correspondent reports.

According to the monitors, the private institutions should work as an alternative to the public ones, but they must act according to clear rules. The private home for seniors in Litochky village, Kyiv region, where the fire occurred several days ago, was not even on the appropriate list of the regional council.

“The stance of the Commissioner [for Human Rights] is unambiguous: the institutions should be created. The private institutions should exist, but their activities should be regulated, and there should be a reasonable control,” Olena Temchenko, the representative of the department for NPM implementation of the Ombudsperson’s Office, said.

“To ban is the easiest way. We cannot ignore the demand for social services, and such demand exists,” monitor Larysa Samsonova added. According to her, in order to improve the situation with the provision of social services, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine should adopt a new version of the relevant law, providing for funding of services, not institutions.

“The private institutions still work in the shadow. My message to the state is that it is necessary to allow them to work, but, according to certain rules,” the monitor said.

Speaking about the conditions in which people are living in geriatric institutions, the monitors said it is often “indifference within an inch of cruelty.”

“During my visits to such institutions, I am mostly shocked not by material conditions, but by the staff’s attitude to the residents,” monitor Darya Svyrydova noted.

For example, the residents of the Tetieve special facility complain about beatings. The residents often suffer insults and verbal humiliation while the administration explains everything with the “lack of funding.”

 “The facilities are usually located far from villages and towns, it is difficult for the charity workers to get there, and government inspections are reduced to a formal inventory procedures and checks of financial documents. The visits of NPM monitors and staff of the Ombudsperson’s Office without prior notice are often the only chance to change the situation in geriatrics,” the monitor added.

According to Iryna Serhiyenko, the representative of the department for NPM implementation of the Ombudsperson’s Office, the staff sometimes do not know how to care for the elderly and persons with disabilities and often abuse their special powers.

“There is no need for much money to respect each other,” Serhiyenko summed up.

In Ukraine, nearly 22,000 senior citizens and persons with disabilities live in 96 residential care facilities and 332 inpatient departments of territorial centres.