Residential care - Immediate reassurances are needed

YESTERDAY’S report, by Carl O’Brien in the Irish Times, that health officials are investigating hundreds of complaints of mistreatment, abuse or lapses in care standards for people with disabilities in residential settings, will cause very many sleepless nights right across the country.

Every mother and father, sister and brother with a close relative in residential care will feel a chill run down their spine. The perfectly natural concern surrounding the welfare of a child – very often an adult – in care that might have been managed for very many years will, all of a sudden, assume renewed, unsettling proportions.

Because we live in the awful shadow of the Ferns, Ryan and Murphy reports, it will not be easy for those with relatives in care to accept what is probably the reality for the majority – that they live in caring environments where professionalism and human decency combine to provide services that meet high standards.