Care Services: Winterbourne View

Baroness Hollins Excerpts

Monday 10th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollins]

My Lords, I welcome the report and the detailed actions that are listed in it. Indeed, it fills me with some hope after so many years of commissioning failure. The proposed change support programme is to be led by the NHS Commissioning Board and the Local Government Association. There is something ironic in responsibility for leading this change being vested in those who primarily have been responsible for the current failure. The evidence is that local authority and NHS leadership do not have the skills or knowledge to effect change. Indeed, my former colleague Jim Mansell’s first report on challenging behaviour was published 20 years ago and made similar recommendations to those in today’s report. Can the Minister confirm that the programme board will indeed be expected to engage with those from the learning disability sector, who understand the issues involved in the design and delivery of the support programme? Finally, why does the report make little or no mention of the need to provide access to the same range of mental health treatments that other citizens have access to, including psychological therapies?

[Earl Howe]

The noble Baroness brings us to a set of key points. She said that in her view the NHS and local government simply do not have the capacity to address these issues properly. In many respects we would agree with that, although it would be wrong to make a blanket statement about the whole country because we know that very good pockets of commissioning and provision exist. One of the tasks of the joint improvement team will be to identify those areas of best practice, and to enable those operating in those areas to go out and mentor other areas. Part of the sum of money that we set aside will be devoted to enabling those high-performing areas to backfill the places while they are engaged in that mentoring exercise. Her basic point is well taken. We think there is a job to do here but it is one of those things that the Board and the Local Government Association need to oversee on a national basis.

That is only a short extension from the function of the Commissioning Board in general, which will be to support commissions. We are grateful to the Local Government Association for its overseeing role for local authorities. I fully expect that they will engage with the learning disability sector. I commend to her the concordat, which is accessible on the department’s website, and she will see from that that the 50 organisations that have signed up to it include a number of voluntary organisations in this sector. Jointly, these bodies have committed to a programme of action. It is not just about defining what needs to be done but about how it will be done. It is an impressive set of commitments that those bodies have signed up to.