The disappearance of Carmelo Fino, an 83-year-old dementia sufferer who wandered out of St Vincent de Paul home last summer, ended in tragedy when his decomposing body was found under a tree in Birżebbuġa. An inquiry pinned the responsibility for Fino’s disappearance on the staff who were on duty that night.
A public care home financed by taxpayers’ money failed a vulnerable person because it did not sufficiently observe its duty of care. The immediate cause of the failure was pinned on the weakest link in the care process.
But the ultimate responsibility for this severe risk-management failure is more likely to lie with inept senior management and the ministry under which it falls. Risk-management processes should have ensured that vulnerable persons are not put in harm’s way. Those processes evidently failed.
Every organisation must manage the risks associated with its activities. The more effective managers conduct regular risk assessments. Inept managers are prone to resort to knee-jerk reactions after risk failures because they have got used to managing by crisis.
Such was the reaction of Active Ageing Minister Jo-Etienne Abela; his solution is to throw taxpayers’ money at the problem. He insists that the disappearance of Fino from St Vincent de Paul was “not a system failure”.
But the solution adopted by the care home management is to spend €1.1 million in three months on emergency security measures administered by five security firms. More will be spent in the coming months. How long will it go on?
It is difficult to see how spending such large amounts of money to guarantee security in a care home for the elderly does not stem from system failure. It is equally difficult to justify turning a care home for highly vulnerable older persons into a virtual prison. This approach is undoubtedly not the hallmark of a public organisation that respects the dignity of those entrusted to its care.
One cannot but feel sympathy for the residents of St Vincent de Paul. One resident told Times of Malta: “It feels like I am spending the last few days, months or years of my life in a prison without committing a crime.”
Another resident remarked: “There are security officers everywhere you look, at every door and every entrance and exit point.”
A judicial inquiry, while essential for the establishment of legal responsibility, is no substitute for an independent management audit to understand the issues involved and point to a way forward. Had such an audit been carried out at St Vincent de Paul, it would probably have recommended radical reforms. Invading the place with security personnel would almost certainly not have been one of the recommendations. Plastering over serious weaknesses of management like this in an insult to residents and their families.
A multi-disciplinary assessment has been carried out on residents to gauge which of them can walk around freely and leave the home. About 100 have been given a ‘free pass’.
That’s all very well, but taxpayers want to know why there seems to be no alternative to a drastic ‘security’ operation for the rest of them. They want to be assured that this is not just another exercise of sweeping the dust under the carpet.
The care of the elderly in a public institution should be characterised by humane practices that reflect the respect that society should have for its vulnerable members.
The Fino saga points to the need for a root-and-branch reform of how older adults are protected in public, and possibly private, institutions.