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Post-Winterbourne View transfer plan branded 'abject failure' by minister

 

Less than 7% of people with learning disabilities due to move out of hospitals would have done so or be given date by deadline

 

 

Fewer than one in 10 people with learning disabilities who were due to be moved out of hospitals in the wake of the Winterbourne View scandal will have been transferred or have a date for doing so by a deadline set for the end of this week.

 

The transfer programme, branded an "abject failure" by the minister responsible, has been dealt a further blow after the man drafted in to breathe new life into it became caught up in an abuse inquiry.

 

Bill Mumford has offered to stand down because of the police investigation into abuse claims at the Womaston residential school for children with learning disabilities run by his charity, MacIntyre, in Powys. The charity is to close the school in July. Norman Lamb, care and support minister, said that "on balance" Mumford should continue in his national role.

 

The Winterbourne View scandal broke three years ago when BBC's Panorama broadcast secret filming of people with learning disabilities being ridiculed and abused at a private hospital near Bristol. Eleven staff were subsequently convicted of offences, six receiving jail terms.

 

After the controversy, ministers ordered a review of the use of facilities similar to Winterbourne View, where fees were an average £3,500 a week. It was calculated that more than 3,000 people with learning disabilities were living in hospitals in England despite the closure of all NHS long-stay institutions and a longstanding presumption against hospital care.

 

A programme was put in place in December 2012 to provide the individuals with "personalised care and support in appropriate community settings" no later than 1 June 2014. But latest official figures show that of 2,615 counted in a survey at the end of March this year, just 182 will have moved by next weekend's deadline and only 74 more have a date for transfer.

 

Lamb has made no attempt to hide his anger at the slow progress, acknowledging the programme has proved an abject failure and describing it in an interview with the Health Service Journal as "utterly hopeless" and his "most depressing and frustrating task".

 

Mumford, chief executive of MacIntyre for 18 years and one of the most respected figures in the learning disability sector, was brought in this year on a four-day-a-week contract to try to revive the programme. He is warning privately that not only will the 1 June target be missed, but it will be impossible to get anywhere near it before next year's general election.

 

The main problem is that in 1,702 of the outstanding cases identified in the March count, including 534 placements in secure hospitals, doctors say the individuals are not ready to move into the community because of illness or the challenging nature of their behaviour.

 

This in part reflects a lack of suitable community-based care and support schemes for people with profound disabilities. But critics say it reflects also a lack of creative thinking and enthusiasm for the programme on the part of health professionals, local care commissioners and, at least until recently, NHS England.

 

In a statement, Lamb said it was "absolutely unacceptable for people to be left in institutions if they are able, with support, to live in their own community".

 

The minister added: wanted to see "real change of pace" in the programme over coming months. "A complete culture change is needed, so that we end the scandal of people staying inappropriately in institutional care."

 

On Mumford, Lamb said: "My best understanding at this time is that MacIntyre has dealt with the [Womaston] situation swiftly and appropriately." It was, on balance, "in the best interests of everyone involved in the programme for Bill to continue in his leadership role".

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Families of the Winterbourne View victims have accused the Government, NHS and local authorities of an "appalling failure" over the rehousing of vulnerable people with disabilities.

They say there has been a "betrayal" of people who are at risk of abuse and neglect after ministers claimed the care of about 3,000 people with learning disabilities and autism should be reviewed in light of the Winterbourne View case three years ago.

 

Undercover filming by BBC's Panorama disclosed the pattern of serious abuse at the private hospital near Bristol and six workers were jailed for ill-treatment and neglect.

 

The families wrote in a letter to The Daily Telegraph: "Today we have seen the appalling failure of the Government, the NHS and local authorities to meet their own deadline for moving people with a learning disability out of places like Winterbourne View."

 

They also wrote: "The time for talking and excuses is over. The Prime Minister must take personal responsibility and address this failure of national government, local government and the NHS."

 

Care and Support Minister Norman Lamb said: "The terrible abuses at Winterbourne View were a wake up call across the whole health and care system but progress to bring about change has been unacceptably slow.

 

"I want to see a real change of pace in the next few months to move people out of institutions where appropriate, and, with the right support, back into the community. NHS England has been tasked to develop a clear plan to move things forward quickly."

 

Complaints have been made that some families are having to travel hundreds of miles to the units where their children have been housed.

 

Mr Lamb said he would "investigate" the distressing situation faced by the family of 13-year-old Josh Wills who suffers from severe autism. He is cared for in Birmingham, some 260 miles away from his family in Cornwall.

 

Mr Lamb said: "It is completely wrong that children with learning disabilities should be cared for so far from home. It is distressing both for them and for their families. The NHS must make sure it provides good quality care close to people's homes and we are working with the NHS to help this happen.

 

"I have heard first-hand from Josh's parents about his case and I am appalled that this remains unresolved. I was horrified by what Josh's parents told me and asked for this to be investigated further."

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  • 4 months later...

It is more than three years since the nation was shocked by sickening, secretly filmed scenes of abuse of people with learning disabilities at a private hospital near Bristol called Winterbourne View. Justice has long since taken its course, but the fallout from the scandal continues as policy-makers struggle to deliver on promises to move out up to 3,000 people found to be living in similar units.

 

Not only has Norman Lamb, the care and support minister, been forced to admit to the “abject failure” of his initiative to find more suitable accommodation by June this year, but latest figures show that more people have been placed in the “assessment and treatment” (A&T) units than have been moved out.

 

To the surprise of many, and the anger of some, Stephen Bubb, the ebullient chief executive of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (Acevo) was in July appointed by the NHS to lead a steering group to demonstrate how the voluntary sector might solve the problem, so that people with what is termed “challenging behaviour” arising from learning disability or autism could be supported “at or near home, not in hospital”.

 

Bubb is this week putting the final touches to the group’s draft report. But in an exclusive interview with Society Guardian, he has outlined key proposals, including a building and property acquisition programme backed by social finance, but pump-primed by cash from Libor fines paid by banks, and new rights for disabled people to challenge decisions on where they are sent to live.

 

“It was absolutely right to close down the long-stay [psychiatric] institutions, yet for people with learning disabilities we seem to have clung to the idea that institutional care is appropriate; that it is somehow OK for people to be stuck in hospital for years, often at huge distances from their families. It’s scandalous.”

 

“It’s extraordinary that we still have in learning disability a model of care that has long been regarded as an inappropriate way of treating people with mental health problems,” says Bubb.

 

Such indignation will cut little ice with critics who accuse Bubb of knowing little about learning disability and of being interested primarily in funnelling lucrative contracts to Acevo members. Much of this hostility was prompted by a blog that Bubb wrote after he was first asked by the NHS chief executive, Simon Stevens, what the voluntary sector could do to help. It recounted how Bubb had “gathered together my top provider members in learning disability for a breakfast to discuss our options”. A plan, written up “on the back of that breakfast”, had been accepted by Stevens who had then appointed Bubb to chair the steering group.

 

Among the politer responses to the blog was: “Shame there were no service users or family members/carers at the breakfast”, and “How arrogant of you to believe that you and your ‘in-crowd’ can sort out the complexity of chronically under-resourced LD provision and decades of cack-handed support planning.”

 

Bubb subsequently apologised for having caused offence and his steering group has had a broader composition including Gavin Harding, who has a learning disability and co-chairs with Lamb a group reviewing post-Winterbourne transformation. But the backlash has continued. A group of senior figures in the learning disability sector, calling themselves the Ideas Collective, secured a meeting with Bubb and then wrote in an open letter: “There is already a wealth of knowledge, evidence, policy and best practice about how to do this. There are a number of key documents we referred to in our meeting that you advised us you were unaware of. ”

 

Has Bubb been hurt by the reaction to his intervention? “At the very beginning I was,” he says. “But after a while I completely understood where people were coming from. I put myself in their place: there has been three years of talk, reports, promises and we end up now with more people in A&T units than when the pledge [to move people out] was made.

 

“Are people fed up, frightened, angry? Yes, of course they are. And when they heard there was going to be yet another taskforce set up, with yet another person who knew nothing about it, did they become angrier still? Yes, of course.”

 

Such indignation will cut little ice with critics who accuse Bubb of knowing little about learning disability and of being interested primarily in funnelling lucrative contracts to Acevo members. Much of this hostility was prompted by a blog that Bubb wrote after he was first asked by the NHS chief executive, Simon Stevens, what the voluntary sector could do to help. It recounted how Bubb had “gathered together my top provider members in learning disability for a breakfast to discuss our options”. A plan, written up “on the back of that breakfast”, had been accepted by Stevens who had then appointed Bubb to chair the steering group.

 

Among the politer responses to the blog was: “Shame there were no service users or family members/carers at the breakfast”, and “How arrogant of you to believe that you and your ‘in-crowd’ can sort out the complexity of chronically under-resourced LD provision and decades of cack-handed support planning.”

 

Bubb subsequently apologised for having caused offence and his steering group has had a broader composition including Gavin Harding, who has a learning disability and co-chairs with Lamb a group reviewing post-Winterbourne transformation. But the backlash has continued. A group of senior figures in the learning disability sector, calling themselves the Ideas Collective, secured a meeting with Bubb and then wrote in an open letter: “There is already a wealth of knowledge, evidence, policy and best practice about how to do this. There are a number of key documents we referred to in our meeting that you advised us you were unaware of. ”

 

Has Bubb been hurt by the reaction to his intervention? “At the very beginning I was,” he says. “But after a while I completely understood where people were coming from. I put myself in their place: there has been three years of talk, reports, promises and we end up now with more people in A&T units than when the pledge [to move people out] was made.

 

“Are people fed up, frightened, angry? Yes, of course they are. And when they heard there was going to be yet another taskforce set up, with yet another person who knew nothing about it, did they become angrier still? Yes, of course.”

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  • 4 weeks later...

Well there's a fucking surprise...

 

 

Winterbourne View report: Learning disability care 'failing'

 

 

The government is failing those with learning disabilities in England by keeping them in hospitals far from home for too long, a report says.

 

The report Winterbourne View - Time for Change comes after abuse was exposed at a Bristol care home in 2011.

 

Its author, Sir Stephen Bubb, was asked by NHS England how to address "serious shortcomings" in support for those with learning disabilities.

 

It has 10 recommendations, including improved training for NHS staff.

 

NHS chief executive Simon Stevens has called for "radical changes" in care for those with learning disabilities.

 

Sir Stephen is chief executive of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO) and chaired an independent group who compiled the report.

 

It recommendations are for the NHS, local government, regulators and the government.

 

They include a framework to support people with learning disabilities and autism move out of hospitals and into the community.

 

Its other recommendations include:

 

the introduction of a charter of rights for people with learning disabilities and/or autism and their families

 

giving people with learning disabilities and their families a "right to challenge" decisions and the right to request a personal budget

 

a requirement for local decision-makers to follow a mandatory framework setting out who is responsible for which services and how they will be held to account

 

a planned closure programme of "inappropriate" in-patient facilities

 

improved training and education for NHS, local government and service provider staff

 

the founding of a social investment fund to build community-based services

 

'Immediate action'

 

Sir Stephen said the Winterbourne View "scandal" had "shocked the nation" and that had led to pressure to prevent such a case from happening again.

 

Neglect and abuse of patients by staff at the Winterbourne View private hospital, near Bristol, was uncovered by BBC Panorama. Six people were jailed in 2012 and five given suspended sentences.

 

Sir Stephen added: "People are still angry and frustrated that more people with learning disabilities are being placed in institutional care than moved into the community.

 

"We urge immediate action, to close all Winterbourne-style institutions and ramp up community provision.

 

"We need a new charter of rights to empower people with learning disabilities and their families, and give them the right to challenge the system.

 

We need that system to have the courage to act on these recommendations, and not to promise another false dawn.

 

"The time for talk is over. It's time for people with learning disabilities or autism and their families to be put first."

 

Mr Stevens said changing the way those with learning disabilities were cared for would mean "challenging legacy models of institutional care".

 

"NHS England's recent work with people with learning disabilities, and this new report, all now prove that radical changes are needed in NHS and social care, so that people with learning disabilities and their families increasingly take control of how the services they want and need are provided."

 

Jane Cummings, chief nursing officer for England, said: "We asked Sir Stephen to tell us how the NHS can better plan and fund care, treatment and support for people with learning disabilities and autism. He's done that.

 

"This report asks every part of the system to respond. We are committed to playing a full and active role in the implementation of the recommendations and call on others to do the same."

 

NHS England said all local NHS leaders must now have a register of inpatients with learning disabilities and autism to create informed local care plans.

 

It is also carrying out care and treatment reviews, which looks at whether a patient is receiving the right care in the right place and takes into account the patient's requests.

 

NHS England expect about 1,000 reviews, which are supported by clinicians as well as NHS and local authority commissioners, to have taken place by the end of the year.

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  • 2 months later...

Say a few nice words and then do fuck all...

 

 

 

Ministers have failed to honour a pledge to move patients with learning difficulties out of hospitals and into community care, the National Audit Office (NAO) says.

 

There were still 2,600 such inpatients in mental health hospitals in England in September 2014, the NAO said.

 

A commitment to move patients was made in the wake of the Winterbourne View abuse scandal.

 

Care Minister Norman Lamb said the government was stepping up efforts.

 

But Margaret Hodge, chairwoman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, said the failure was "unacceptable".

 

Ministers pledged in December 2012 that any inpatient with a learning disability or challenging behaviour, who would be better off cared for in the community, would be moved out of hospital by June 2014.

 

The promise came after BBC's Panorama programme exposed abuse of patients by staff at the Winterbourne View private hospital near Bristol.

 

But the NAO said ministers had underestimated the "complexity and level of challenge" involved in discharging so many patients into the community.

 

The government's NHS reforms meant they lacked the "traditional levers" to implement the necessary changes, its report added.

 

It said figures from NHS England showed that by March 2014 there were still more than 2,600 inpatients with learning difficulties.

 

That number has remained broadly stable, according to figures from September 2014.

 

While NHS England set a new "ambition" in August 2014 to transfer half of the 2,600 inpatients to more appropriate care by the end of March 2015, the NAO said that so far only around 400 had been moved.

 

The report also showed that from the 48 patients in Winterbourne View at the time of its closure, 10 were still in hospital, 20 were living in residential care, five were in supported housing, 12 had their own tenancies, and one had died.

 

Ms Hodge said: "People with learning disabilities, admitted to hospitals for assessment and treatment, have been badly let down by government.

"More than two years since its response to the abuse of patients at the Winterbourne View hospital, it is unacceptable for government to have failed in meeting its core commitment to move people out of mental health hospitals and into the community."

 

In a joint statement, the charities Mencap and the Challenging Behaviour Foundation, said the report showed "abject failure" to tackle the issue.

Mr Lamb admitted the government had not gone far enough.

 

He added: "I am looking at legislative options to give people with learning disabilities and their families a stronger voice and more rights - and I'm looking at how we can increase specialised housing options, so that more people can live independently but with the support that they need."

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  • 3 months later...

A cruel nurse has been struck off for bullying her Winterbourne View patients after her taunts were captured on camera by an undercover reporter.

 

Joanna Garbutt was filmed mocking vulnerable patients at the private hospital near Bristol.

 

 

The Nursing and Midwifery Council heard she threatened to calm a patient down by shoving drugs 'up her bum' and described another as a monkey, and joked she should be locked up in Bristol Zoo.

 

Garbutt called one woman a 'bad person' and a 'pain in the a**e' and threatened to hose her down in the garden instead of giving her a shower.

 

Footage gathered by the BBC Panorama team for 'Undercover Care: The Abuse Exposed' broadcast in May 2011, resulted in 13 employees at the home being immediately suspended.

 

The documentary at the Castlebeck operated home sparked an investigation into standards at all 20 of the company's residential units in the UK and later saw the firm go into administration with £250 million of debt.

 

Garbutt repeatedly called one patient 'childish', and yelled 'do you realise how childish and silly you look crawling along the floor like a toddler?'

 

None of the clips of Garbutt were used in the documentary but they were handed over to police as part of a criminal investigation.

 

She escaped criminal charges but was hauled before a council panel for her misconduct.

 

In one clip she threatened to sedate a patient with rectal diazepam if they didn't calm down, saying: "Hang on, I'll just go and get some rectal diazepam that will shut her up couple of those up her bum and she'll be quiet."

 

At another point she said: "I offered a monkey cage to her the other week and she thought it was funny, I said that I was going to phone Bristol Zoo and see if they have got any spare cages in with the monkeys.

 

"I think actually she might frighten the poor bloody monkeys even the gorillas I think might find her hard to deal with."

 

During the five weeks of filming, Panorama's reporter captured footage of vulnerable patients being slapped, pinned down and verbally abused and bullied. Eleven care workers admitted a total of 38 charges in 2012, six of whom were jailed and the remainder were handed suspended sentences.

 

Garbutt, who was not present or represented at the hearing, admitted four charges of bullying between 2008 and 2011 relating to four different patients and a total of 22 unpleasant comments via email.

 

Announcing the decision to bar Garbutt from the profession, panel chair Joy Julien said: 'The registrant accepts that her comments were cruel and unprofessional."

 

 

Read more at http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/Cruel-nurse-struck-bullying-patients-Winterbourne/story-26637916-detail/story.html#IhLeXZBTTRJCA37X.99

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  • 2 weeks later...

MD OF SCANDAL-HIT CARE HOME OPERATOR DISQUALIFIED

The managing director of a Darlington-headquartered care home business which was at the centre of a patient abuse scandal has been disqualified for failing to act on whistleblower concerns.

 

 

Neil Cruickshank of Castlebeck Care (Teesdale) Ltd has been banned for eight years, meaning he cannot directly or indirectly become involved in the promotion, formation or management of a company for the duration of the term.

 

The disqualification relates to Cruickshank "failing to follow proper company procedures" after receiving a whistleblower email from a nurse at Castlebeck's Winterbourne View Nursing Home in Bristol regarding the behaviour of staff.

 

The level of detail in the email indicated the seriousness of the concerns and "should have been a sufficient alert for the company's director to act rapidly, robustly and responsibly".

 

The Insolvency Service said that on 22 October 2010, a senior manager sent Cruickshank an email and further communications, both from the whistleblower and internally, which "clearly demonstrated that the whistleblowing policy was not being adhered to".

 

Castlebeck Care (Teesdale) Ltd failed after this date to launch any internal investigation, with the director of governance, the psychiatrist for the service and the group clinical director not informed of any whistleblowing complaint.

 

Darlington-headquartered Castlebeck Care (Teesdale) was the subject of a police investigation following a BBC Panorama programme which revealed patient abuse at one of its hospitals. The business subsequently entered administration in 2013 before being acquired by Danshell Group in a rescue deal which saved about 850 jobs

 

Sue MacLeod, chief investigator at the Insolvency Service, said: "Company directors should note from this enforcement result that any failure to follow their own internal policies is likely to lead to serious censure.

 

"In this particular case, Mr Cruickshank was aware, or should have been aware, of a series of indicators of poor quality of care within Castlebeck Care (Teesdale) Ltd, long before these were highlighted by BBC Panorama in Winterbourne View Nursing Home.

 

"The most serious of these was his clear contemporaneous knowledge both of a serious whistleblowing at Winterbourne View and that it was being mishandled by the senior staff members who reported to him.

 

"Patients and their families deserved far higher levels of internal governance."

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  • 6 months later...

The shadow home secretary, Andy Burnham, has called for G4S to be stripped of its contract to run children’s prisons after seven members of staff were suspended following abuse claims at a youth offenders institution. Burnham has also called for a wide-ranging review of all the company’s contracts within the criminal justice system to be led by the home secretary and justice secretary.

 

An investigation by BBC’s Panorama, to be aired on Monday evening, features footage taken by an undercover reporter working as a guard at Medway secure training centre (STC), Kent, which holds children aged between 12 and 18. The Panorama reporter witnessed scenes of children being assaulted by guards and using restraint techniques unnecessarily. In one instance, a child tells staff who are squeezing his windpipe that he cannot breathe.

 

“What shocks me is that we’ve heard these things time and again, and every time we’ve had bland assurance from G4S it won’t happen again and yet it just carries on the same,” Burnham told the Guardian.

 

In 2004, 15 year-old Gareth Myatt died after being restrained by three adult guards at Rainsbrook STC, operated by G4S, the world’s largest security firm. The teenager, who who was 4ft 10in tall and weighed six-and-a-half stone, was restrained after complaining that he had wrongly been locked in his room as a punishment for failing to clean a sandwich toaster that he said other children had used.

 

G4S currently runs England’s three STCs – Medway, Oakhill in Milton Keynes and Rainsbrook in Northamptonshire. Following a damning inspection report on Rainsbrook last year, the contract to run Rainsbrook was taken away from G4S in September, although the company is in place until May this year when MTCNovo will take over. The Youth Justice Board also announced in September that G4S had won the contract to operate Medway STC for another five years. G4S said it could win only one of the two STCs under the procurement process.

 

The inspection at Rainsbrook found children had been subjected to degrading treatment and racist comments from staff. Inspectors said some staff took drugs while on duty, colluded with detainees and behaved “extremely inappropriately” with young people, causing distress and humiliation. Six members of staff were dismissed.

 

In 2014, following a Guardian investigation, 14 children who had been unlawfully restrained in STCs run by G4S and Serco were awarded damages amounting to £100,000. Neither company admitted liability, but paid two thirds of the damages. The remaining third was paid by the YJB.

 

On Friday, G4S announced that seven members of staff at Medway had been suspended following the allegations made by Panorama.

 

Burnham told the Guardian: “This is first and foremost a matter for Kent police, although it is incumbent on the home secretary to ensure that they have all support and resources they need to cary out. Given that this looks like institutional failure on behalf of G4s, it needs to be a far reaching investigation that doesn’t just concentrate on the individuals concerned but also looks at what was done by those in managerial positions.

 

“But more broadly it raises very serious questions for the government to answer. If these allegations prove to be true, then an immediate arrangement must be made for G4S to be stripped of this contract ... Given that this company in particular has been drinking in the last-chance saloon when it comes to government contracts, this feels like a failure too far..”

 

Paul Cook, the managing director for G4S children’s services, said: “We are treating the allegations with the utmost gravity and have taken immediate action to suspend a number of staff members who are alleged to have conducted themselves in a manner which is not in line with our standards.

 

“We take any allegations of unacceptable or inappropriate behaviour extremely seriously and are giving our full support and cooperation to the local authority designated officer for safeguarding children and the police as the investigation moves forward.”

 

The YJB said no more children would be sent to Medway while the investigation was ongoing.

 

Eric Allison is the Guardian’s prison correspondent and was a consultant on Panorama’s Teenage Prison Abuse Exposed, which airs on Monday 11 January 20.30.

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Yeah , it was the guy I did all the work with.

 

Someone off here was asked if they wanted to be involved.

I don't know how much you can share but I'd like to know more about where their leads come from and how many such stories come their way

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Social care is massively incestuous in this country and particularly regionally with staff knowing friends, relatives and partners working in different companies and organisations.

 

With each programme they make sensitively and highlight neglect and abuse they increase a network of contacts who know of other areas of concern and are then more willing to engage as whistleblowers.

 

The amount of work that goes into a programme is crazy. From making first contact with them for WV to the programme being aired took 15 months.

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