Institution likened to ‘concentration camp’
A clinical psychologist has likened an institution where disabled people lived in the 1970s to World War II ‘‘concentration camps’’ at the Abuse in Care – Royal Commission of Inquiry Disability, Deaf and Mental Health institutional care hearing yesterday.
Dr Olive Webb started working at Sunnyside Hospital in Christchurch in 1970 as an assistant clinical psychologist.
She has an interest in how environments impact people’s behaviour and spent a lot of time with residents.
Webb recalled one villa at Sunnyside that housed around 70 men with learning disabilities.
During bath time, the men were stripped naked and ‘‘herded’’ into the shower room together and then walked back through the villa, still naked, to get dressed. She said it reminded her of concentration camps, similar to those used during WWII.
After breakfast, the men would be moved into a day room and left there with nothing to do. ‘‘There was a complete removal of thinking, creativity, dignity and independence,’’ she said.
Webb started a work programme, originally with 12 men.
They would place stickers on bibs and be paid in tokens, which meant they could buy colouring books or lollies at the ward shop. The programme was so successful other residents wanted to join in.
Another time she started playing music to residents to get them moving. She remembers the difference it made to one woman who would usually sit still all day with her arms crossed. Within weeks her ‘‘lights would come on’’ to the music, Webb said.
Despite the last institution in New Zealand closing in 2006, Webb said some care homes still functioned like institutions today. Some homes had many disabled people living together, being supported and managed by a few people who held all the power, and everything was kept ‘‘terribly secret’’, she said. Webb called for a move away from a ‘‘one size fits all’’ care model of disabled people.
A mother, Alison Adams, also described how her two disabled sons’ behaviour and physical conditions declined so badly after living in Templeton Hospital near Christchurch, that one turned into a ‘‘zombie’’. She put the behavioural change down to the abuse and neglect they suffered at the hands of staff.