‘Inspection regime flawed’ at care centres for disabled

The standard of Hiqa inspections into centres for people with disabilities has been questioned, with a new report claiming that failures to fully inspect some facilities could result in "concealment of abusive care practices".

The report, compiled for Inclusion Ireland, looks in depth at the first 50 Hiqa inspections of residential services for people with disabilities and argues that while, in general, the inspection regime has helped to identify shortcomings in the system, some aspects of it are flawed.

The two researchers who compiled the report argue that while the term ‘centre’ is generally used in the reports, in reality, not all centres are fully inspected, and those parts that are can be a single house, a campus of houses or houses located in different areas.