In our nursing home 'restraining' residents by using furniture is classed as gross misconduct and anyone found doing so will be immediately suspended pending a disciplinary hearing. We use cot sides only for permanantly bed ridden patients who move around a lot in bed and are at risk of falling out. Cot sides would never ever be used for mobile residents. If our residents want to get up and wander round the building at 4am then so be it, the night staff will just have to keep an eye out. Thank you for pointing out that not all nursing homes are brutal concentration camps who drug the inmates, it's not a view that's expressed very often as nursing home bashing is the new Prada handbag. So much so in fact that my family are finally throwing in the towel after 25 years of service and selling up. So that will be one less decent home open and Manchester will now, as far as I am aware, be left with no specialist top end residential EMI units. Perhaps when people have to keep their elderly relatives at home and grandad has bitten little Johnny, taken a dump in the living room and waved his winkie at Mrs Smith from number 13 before wandering out the door with no trousers on and ending up in Tesco people will actually start to realise the jobs such homes did.