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A secure dementia facility tried to stop the chief ombudsman inspecting their operation during the Covid-19 lockdown, despite him having the legal right too.
The ombudsman's office scrutinised six secure dementia and psycho-geriatric facilities during the earlier Covid-19 alert level 3 and 4 lockdowns in April and May, to make sure measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus would not have a detrimental effect on residents' treatment and conditions.
Chief ombudsman Judge Peter Boshier. Photo: RNZ /Dom Thomas
On the whole the report found the units they inspected were strongly committed to residents welfare.
Four recommendations and 21 suggestions have been made for improvements.
Chief ombudsman Judge Peter Boshier says not all aged care facilities rolled out the welcome mat.
"One of the facilities was not at all happy with me, entering my staff and sought legal advice at my request on the lawfulness of us entering," Boshier said.
"When, as I understand it, a QC advised the rest home owner that we will send our legal rights, the conversation then turned to more positive things. We did enter, we were welcome to.
"But initially, quite a bit of apprehension about the ombudsman, and our role.
"I think that this was wholly new for the private sector in New Zealand. The ombudsman's known well for the public service agencies such as prisons, mental health units. This is the first time, possibly, that I know of in the world, where an ombudsman has been designated by Parliament to go into private facilities, not owned by the state but owned by others.
"And you can see that they wanted to test us fairly carefully because it's a space they're not used to."
Generally the six facilities were found to be well committed to residents' welfare, but there were some issues, like the alert level bubble system not being fully put into practice.
"Bubbles weren't operating as well as they could have... We were positive and complimentary about the commitment that rest homes have to keep residents safe. This is very vulnerable stuff, and in some countries such as Canada there's been a disastrous situation in relation to Covid-19 in recent times, so to be fair New Zealand's done well.
"The purpose of this report is to set up a platform for best practice for the future. We've recommended what really is a good bubble to be focused on and implemented."
One incident involved the testing of one patient, where the person was being held, "almost restrained in a way that just didn't seem right, it didn't square with that notion of dignity that you should have in relation to an older person," Boshier said.
"We just didn't like what we saw.
"The person holding the resident was a maintenance worker, so not a clinician, but a maintenance worker. I'm not necessarily critical of that, it's just that the more you're trained and the more experience you have got dealing with older people... these are all things we'd like to feel rest homes continue to focus on and improve on."