My Take | Problems with care homes can be resolved, but only if officials care
Some facilities serving the mentally disabled or the elderly are, literally, getting away with murder while officials twiddle their thumb
The Bridge of Rehabilitation now sounds less like a nursing home and more like a house of horrors.
Its closure has come too late – thanks to the Social Welfare Department being completely asleep at the wheel.
Questions have been raised about at least five deaths at the care home for the mentally disabled in the past two years.
Its former superintendent, Cheung Kin-wah, escaped punishment after allegedly sexually assaulting a 21-year-old disabled woman under his care because she was declared unfit to testify against him.
This home is probably just the most sensational failure of the department’s oversight under a system that has proved completely ineffectual. Many care homes operate with terrible service and subpar management under the department’s monitoring system. They are just not as extreme as the Bridge of Rehabilitation, or their misdeeds have not been exposed.
This is a long-standing systemic failure and the government’s most senior welfare officials are directly implicated.
The department’s director, Carol Yip Man-kuen, and her boss, Secretary for Labour and Welfare Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, should be personally held responsible.