Only 8% of disability centres meet Hiqa inspection standards

Only 8 per cent of inspections, carried out last year at disability centres, and reported on by the Health Information and Quality Authority, resulted in entirely clean bills of health, a new report shows.

But the majority of centres provided "a good quality service", Hiqa's annual Overview Report on the Regulation of Designated Centres for Adults and Children with Disabilities has said.

The report also said Hiqa received almost 1,800 notifications, from service providers, of suspected or confirmed allegations of abuse of residents.

The authority carried out 741 inspections at 561 disability centres in 2015.

More than 40 per cent of the inspections were unannounced.

Inspection reports were published in 577 cases and only 49 of these found no action was required to comply with national standards.

A further 208 inspections needed less than 10 actions to be carried out, while 63 required 30 actions or more.

Hiqa began regulating centres for people with disabilities in 2014. At present, there are more than 900 such centres nationwide, of which 368 have completed registration with the authority.

It said more than 560 centres were examined in 2015, and over 90 per cent of these required only one or two inspections, indicating they provided “a good quality service”.

Residents

The 49 inspections that found full compliance with regulations, showed centres had “an excellent standard in the provision of support and care to residents”, the report said.

Issues found at centres included failure to provide effective, individualised assessment arrangements for residents, failure to develop adequate personal plans and the impacts of these failures on residents’ lives.

Mary Dunnion, chief inspector of social services and director of regulation at Hiqa, said: "The inspections carried out in 2015 found evidence of a high standard of care and a focus on individual resident's needs and preferences in many cases."