Winterbourne View Hospital and the Transforming Care Programme

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair today, Ms McVey. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) for having secured today’s debate, and for the depth of her commitment to the rights of disabled and autistic people over many years.

The 10th anniversary of the screening of the “Panorama” documentary that showed the horrific abuse of vulnerable residents at Winterbourne View near Bristol is a time for sober reflection. We remember the victims and their families, and the horrific trauma they suffered. What happened at Winterbourne View was sickening, and it was chilling that despite safeguarding concerns having been raised several times previously, it took an undercover documentary to prompt urgent action. The Winterbourne View scandal should have led to a genuine transformation of care and support for people with learning disabilities and autistic people. The scandal revealed a system that was not fit for purpose; a level of institutionalisation that resulted in a dehumanising culture; and huge problems with transparency and accountability. The Government acknowledged that hospitals were not the right place for people with learning disabilities and autistic people to be living, and promised to end that practice.

However, in a terrible failure, not only are around 2,000 autistic people and people with learning disabilities still trapped in inappropriate hospitals, there have been further appalling scandals. At Mendip House, eight years after Winterbourne View, we saw the taunting, bulling and abuse of autistic people. At Whorlton Hall, nine years after Winterbourne View, we saw a disturbingly similar revelation of horrific abuse in a private hospital behind closed doors. There have been many, many individual stories of families whose loved ones end up in assessment and treatment units under the Mental Health Act 1983, who battle—sometimes for years—to get them out, and live in fear for their health and safety every single day as they do so.

The failures are all the more distressing because we know what good care and support in the community looks like, from examples such as Alderwood LLA in Northamptonshire. It runs small homes for autistic people, and all of its services are rated by the Care Quality Commission as good or outstanding. I have spoken many times in this place about my constituent Matthew Garnett, who as a 15-year-old was sectioned and taken to an ATU. I supported Matthew’s parents as they battled for months to get him out of hospitals. With his parents, I visited him in hospital—at St Andrew’s in Northampton—where I was shocked both by how ill Matthew had become, particularly how much weight he had lost, and by the attitude of some of the staff who were responsible for his care. St Andrew’s has been found by the CQC to have multiple failings in several different inspections. Later, I visited Matthew in his new home, provided by Alderwood, where he was almost unrecognisable—a healthy, happy young man, enjoying football and trips to the seaside, volunteering in his local community, requiring a tiny fraction of the medication he had been prescribed in hospital, and living life to the full.

One of the keys to Alderwood’s success was undoubtedly the training and skill of their staff, who are highly specialised in communicating with, and supporting, autistic people. They were able to see such huge improvements in Matthew’s health in part because they were able to communicate with him in ways that reduced, rather than exacerbated, his anxiety. I pay tribute to the campaigning work of Matthew’s mother, Isabelle Garnett, who in recent years has used her family’s terrible experience to campaign under the banner of Homes Not Hospitals. Matthew should never have been in St Andrew’s, yet the Government continue to funnel millions of pounds into inappropriate hospital-based accommodation —places where health and wellbeing deteriorates, where people are physically and chemically restrained or put into seclusion, where contact with friends and family is limited, and where patient advocacy is in short supply.

The Government’s failure to deliver transforming care has been due to a lack of political will. It is not enough to just close hospital beds if the funding is not available to deliver homes in communities. It is not enough to expect that people will not be admitted to hospital if there is such limited support available for people with learning disabilities and autistic people in communities that many families find that they are unable to cope, and face crises of mental health or increasingly challenging behaviour.

The failure to deliver transforming care is also fundamentally linked to the failure to deliver social care reform more widely, and to the paucity of the Government’s vision. We need a sustainably funded social care system that enables everyone with support needs—whether they are working-age adults or older people—to live as independently as possible with dignity and love, but the Government have dragged their feet, ignoring social care for more than a decade.

We have heard far too many statements of outrage and warm words from the Government; we need action. I call on the Minister to put in place the funding needed to deliver homes not hospitals for people with learning disabilities and autistic people, and to stop funnelling NHS money into inappropriate private hospital placements, which so often do more harm than good.