Winterbourne View

Baroness Emerton Excerpts

Tuesday 30th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Donaghy]

My Lords—

[Baroness Emerton]

My Lords—

[Baroness Northover]

My Lords, I have been keeping a tally and it is the turn of the Labour Party and then the Cross-Benchers.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the noble Baroness makes an important point. We have been clear that those who lead organisations where people suffer abuse or neglect should be held accountable. We have made it clear that there is a gap which needs to be addressed. A range of options is available through regulation; for example, by barring people from running care homes or hospitals ever again or, indeed, through criminal sanctions. As I have mentioned, very soon we will publish our final recommendations on what more can be done to prevent abuse and protect those who are in vulnerable situations.

[Baroness Emerton]

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for his response in terms of support workers, and particularly on challenging behaviour. My past experience nearly 20 years ago of decanting hundreds of patients from large institutions satisfactorily into the community was due to the fact that the psychologists made an independent assessment of each individual of their clinical and environmental needs, and thus the training needs of the support workers. Can the Minister assure us that a holistic approach in terms of multi-professional involvement will be taken, and that it will particularly be led by evidence-based psychologists who understand challenging behaviour?

[Earl Howe]

I agree fully with the noble Baroness. The aim and aspiration for this group of individuals is that they should benefit from personalised services. What that means is that their needs should be individually assessed professionally by multi-disciplinary teams. The noble Baroness did not do this, but there are some who suggest that we need to get rid of in-patient services altogether. There are individuals who will continue to require in-patient services, but these should be used only in very limited cases. We need to aim towards a situation where no one is sent unnecessarily into in-patient services for assessment and treatment. We know that that has not been happening. For the small number of people for whom in-patient services may be needed for a short period, the focus has to be on providing good quality care that is safe, caring and open to the community, which is another important aspect, and that people can move on from these services quickly. Planning starts from day one to enable people to move out of the in-patient setting into more appropriate care as quickly as possible. That comes back to intelligent commissioning.