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Close these units now. Support for families needs to be there from diagnosis onward to ensure crises do not occur. Care should be local and supportive of family rights. Seven years on from Winterbourne View, why has nothing changed? | Saba Salman ShamefulA SHOCKING RECORD OF FAILURE Camphill Village Communities must not be destroyed Camphill Village Communities must not be destroyed
The abuse of people with autism and learning disabilities filmed secretly by Panorama at an NHS-funded, privately-run hospital just 8 years after Winterbourne suggests that not much has changed. The government has failed miserably in it's stated aim to implement the key recommendations in Lord Bubb's report that these institutions - prisons in all but name where people are kept in solitary - are shut down. This is not an isolated slip-up. The staff ( or many) at this hospital, now suspended, were thugs who, like warders in Victorian asylums like Bedlam, taunted, abused and insulted residents. One woman is seen screaming at a resident that her family are " f****** poison" They should, like their predecessors at Winterboune face custodial sentences. But they were enabled. Failed by a company that employs low-paid, low-skiled workers manifestly unfit to look after extremely vulnerable people. Failed by the CQC, increasingly unfit for purpose, that failed to pick up on what was going on and awarding the provider a 'Good' rating on its last inspection. It’s time the CQC was broken up. It’s too big, too bureaucratic and all-too-often looks in the wrong places. And failed by successive administrations that have not grasped the simple distinction that mental health and learning disabilities are two different conditions that require a different approach. It's time those MPs who take an interest in this forgotten section of citizens woke up to the fact that we have a rotten system built on a shaky foundation and a flawed premise. And that it needs root and branch reform. Watch the programme: bbc.in/2YLwNvz
Alain Catzeflis
Alliance for Camphill
The Society for Children and Adults
with Learning Disabilities and their Families