Calls for action over unregulated care workers after NHS mental health abuse scandal exposed

Unregulated healthcare workers are a risk to the most vulnerable patients, a former victim’s commissioner has warned after The Independent and Sky News uncovered a “horrifying” sexual abuse scandal within NHS mental health services.

Dame Vera Baird called for a formal framework for healthcare assistants and support workers, who do not have a mandatory professional register like doctors and nurses and can “come in and go out from one hospital to another” without the same thorough checks.

Dame Vera told The Independent that the setup did not lead to a “very safe way of working” because healthcare assistants are “in an environment where they are responsible for vulnerable people”.

“If there has been abuse from mental health care assistants who are also agency staff who are coming in and going out from one hospital to another, that needs to be looked at,” she said.

“This is not a very safe way of working. Some kind of framework around agency staff seems to be very important [to have].”

She warned that sexual predators may go into mental health services and work in units where patients can be “highly sexualised”, prompting a “dreadful combination”.

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Source: The Independent, 30 January 2024