I’m not going to rant. I’m just disgusted. The local news showed cellphone footage of a caretaker at a care center abusing a man at the Jossen Vocational Academy in Anaheim. Link. (L.A. Times. May require registration.)
When the news played the video last night I wasn’t looking at the TV. I thought the ‘high pitched wails’ were coming from an animal. Then I looked up to see it was a mentally retarded person being hit about the face. It was pitiful. The patient (or client, or whatever people who go to this place are called) could not know why he was being attacked. (Mental abilities of a two-year-old.) All he could do is cringe and whine.
And there were two people there; one doing the hitting, and one recording the ‘fun’.
I’ll take death over institutionalized care, thankyouverymuch. The institution does little to ensure the right kind of people are caring for their charges. It’s hard, depressing, dirty work for little pay. The average joe can’t afford the level of care that would be afforded in a private caregiver situation (my SIL pays $3600/mo, plus room and board, for private care). If she doesn’t die by the end of the year, it’s in the nursing home for her, because her funds will be gone.
You can look up the rating of a given care facility on Medicare’s site, and most of them have no reports of Extremely Horrible Abuse as cited in your link, but I’m guessing many, many incidents go unreported (undetected). The average and acceptable levels of care are not nearly adequate for my (or most people’s) standards.
Put the pillow over my face, please, and save yourself the hassle of unhitching me from the shower head. I ain’t goin’.
Even worse, I am paying for insurance to make sure my bills in one of these torture chambers is covered when the time comes. I periodically wonder why.
I’m on record with everyone in my family to put me down if I can’t care for myself–don’t send me to a “home” because I’ll have to find a way to kill myself there. I’ve had 3 grandparents end up in nursing homes and each one starved themselves to death within weeks. My husband or kids had better not let that happen to me.
Some people are just sick fucks and there is nothing that can be done for them. They need to be removed from society. Perhaps these young men can be rehabilitated and will learn how wrong they were…but I wouldn’t count on it.
Doing a little digging and I find this description of Jossen Vocational Academy. Very similar to our two programs up here in the high desert, but when it comes to abuse, the similarities stop. Johnny, I did not see the article since it required registration. So, I am just going on my gut instincts.
Kalhoun, I understand your hatred for institutionalized care, but this is a day program that is a totally separate facility from residential (or institutionalized) facilities. I by no means accept this type of behavior from any staff member, in my program or any other program. I would like to see some charges pressed against the individual as well as immediate dismissal of the two staff involved. I’m pretty sure APS, Community Care Licensing, OCRC, Area Board and a few other entities will be involved.
Every time I hear or see something like this, I always think like an owner. Did I primarily get into this business to help my fellow man, or did I do this for the money? Usually, an incident like this gives us the answer which usually a symptom of the latter. It (the attitudes expressed to the clients/consumers) flows down from the owner, to the program director, to the supervisor, to the staff member, just like any other business. Totally unacceptable on all levels.
Still, I wouldn’t paint all facilities with a broad brush of condemnation. My grandmother was well cared for in a nursing home. My dad, too, before he died last summer. He was in the last stages of Alzheimer’s, with related physical problems, had to be hospitalized, and my elderly mom and I were unable to care for him 24/7 at home, though we tried our best. The nursing home/rehab center he was in attended to his every need. We visited him twice a day, his doctor saw him regularly, and the staff made sure he was kept fed, hydrated, occupied, clean, given meds, etc.
I’m not saying that abuse does not happen, but I wouldn’t think of all care facilities as warehouses of horror.
For all of the horros I have seen in my time as an ICU nurse… after all of the gory brutal internet video I have seen… after all of the horror movies I have seen (including Battlefield Earth and Showgirls :D)…for the first time, my stomach was literally turned. I wept like a fucking baby for that victim who was but a baby himself.
There is no retrieval for the souls of the responsible parties. There is nothing that could be done to these fuckheads to make me think that they have paid their debt to society.
I know the chances of it happening are greater in a full-time care facility, but obviously it happens in day programs as well. I believe most people get into the “business” to help their fellow man. Those people are usually the ones who go to school and are professionals in the field (which it sounds like you’re one of that group). They’re a small percentage of the manpower it takes to run a nursing facility. The reality is that many unskilled people get into the field. There isn’t enough money or staffing to do the job correctly. The salaries don’t draw our best and brightest to do the day to day “grunt” work that the patients see (and need) every day. My SIL’s floor had one attendant for each wing. The 100+ year old woman across the hall had it made. and her granddaughter stayed with her all day – every day, to make sure her needs were being met. My SIL would sit in her own filth for hours until it was “her turn” to be cared for. The staff cannot be relied on to change a person who’s capable of telling them they’re wet! How well do you think the mentally incapable fare in that department?
In these days of Social Security’s very existence being in question, I shudder at the thought of what the situation will look like 10 or 20 years from now. Save your nickels and dimes, kiddies…you’ll wish you did when you’re trapped inside your body waiting for someone to bitch you out for shitting yourself. Me? I’m going to take Eve’s lead…sleeping pills and razor blades, baby…
Agreed. Not all caregivers are human waste; the problem is that with so many in need and so few to take care of them, it’s often easy to miss the bad apples.
What got me was the utter helplessness of the situation. The sheer helplessness that man must’ve felt, unable to comprehend what was going on, unable to defend himself, unable in anyway to extricate himself from his predicament.
And me? Unable to reach through the pixels of my screen to grab those rat bastards by the throat and scream “What in the bloody fuck is wrong with you?”
Religion has nothing to do with it…this is all about two idiots betraying the trust of another fellow man who cannot defend himself…an ultimate act of cowardice; no matter what religion (or not) you ascribe to.
It’s worse than you think, in this particular case. The man does not even know that this is not how things are supposed to be, and how they will always be. Despair does not begin to cover it.
Vid doesn’t work for me. All I’m getting is the player, with a notice to “pick a news story from the pane on the right,” and I can’t seem to find the story there. Suggestions?
Never mind. I just found it on another news site. Goddamn. GodDAMN. I’d have cut that son of a bitch’s throat and let him bleed out on the floor if I’d found that cellphone. Motherfucking worthless piece of shit.