Ombudsman warns of unregistered institutes for elderly

Ombudsman Anna Sabatova have checked seven illegal social care institutes for the elderly suffering from dementia and found out that the care is unprofessional and bad and the conditions there undignified. Sabatova stressed that no one knew how many such institutes existed in the Czech Republic.

„The checks allow the only conclusion: all the institutes should be either legalised by being registered or should be closed“, said Sabatova and added that regional offices should supervise the process.

There is a network of regular institutes for the elderly, registered at the relevant regional offices. Their list can be found on the web page of the Labour and Social Affairs Ministry. The institutes are under the control of social workers and they are state-subsidised.

The unregistered institutes are mainly situated in the boarding houses that went bust, cancelled cultural houses and large houses for which no other use was found. Their names usually include the words such as "satisfied old age" and "dignified old age." In fact, these are the institutes that people can hardly distinguish from the registered facilities.

The difference is that they do not receive any state subsidies, only living from their clients' fees. They do not have enough money for quality care and they are not subject to any control.

The results of the checks have revealed that the institutes strip their clients of all their incomes and do not leave them even the 15 percent prescribed by the law. The clients are often bound to their beds and locked in their rooms, without any rules. The unqualified personnel administers them tranquillisers at their own whim. In addition, the care is not professional, but intuitive.

Unregistered institutes circumvented the law, for which they may be fined one million crowns or criminally prosecuted.