Missed checks People with learning disabilities dying decades too soon
PEOPLE with learning difficulties are dying more than 20 years younger than the rest of the population exactly a decade on from the Winterbourne View scandal.
Healthwatch South Gloucestershire, which was set up in the wake of a BBC Panorama exposé on May 31, 2011, into appalling systematic abuse at the hospital in Hambrook, north Bristol, says the risk of dying unnecessarily from treatable conditions remains far too high.
Only 36 per cent of those with learning difficulties are estimated to take up their annual GP health check-up.
It has launched a checklist to encourage more people to attend the appointments in a bid to improve life expectancies.
The horrifying Panorama footage showed disabled people repeatedly being pinned down, slapped, taunted, teased and dragged into showers while fully clothed.
Eleven staff were prosecuted, although it was reported last week that families of those who were placed at Winterbourne View Hospital claim abuse continues in similar facilities.
After the scandal, the Government brought in the Transforming Care programme with the aim of significantly reducing the number of people with a learning disability or autism admitted to hospitals and assessment and treatment units.
NHS England aimed to halve the number of learning disabled and autistic people in inpatient settings by 2019 and improve the health and care services in those which remained open, but the timescale to achieve this has since been extended by five years.
Healthwatch, which also has Bristol and North Somerset branches, was formed as a result of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 to act on patients’ behalf and give them a safe place to talk about their wellbeing needs.
It is working to ensure people with learning difficulties get access to basic health and care to prevent them from getting ill and dying sooner than they should. The organisation has worked with those with disabilities as well as Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire CCG, Southern Brooks social prescribers and South Gloucestershire Council to develop a checklist to boost attendance at annual GP health checks.
It will present a report to the council’s health scrutiny committee this month outlining how it was produced.
The checklist is a tool for patients and carers to fill in before attending a learning disability annual health check and guides them to recognise when things aren’t right, take actions to keep healthy, speak up and seek help. It has been uploaded to GP resource TeamNet, and Healthwatch is urging both doctors and people with learning difficulties to make use of it.
One of the aims is to raise awareness of health action plans, highlighting warning signs that are sometimes missed, like constipation, and the importance of health screenings, such as for breast and testicular cancer.
Healthwatch South Gloucestershire area manager Vicky Marriott said: “Local Healthwatch was formed as a response to the Transforming Care report by the Department of Health after the shocking details about care at Winterbourne View emerged. So it is especially sad to learn that people with learning disabilities are still in inappropriate care settings across the country.
“It is our unrelenting mission to listen and share people’s lived experience so that the information informs how health and social care services improve.
“In Healthwatch South Gloucestershire we recently listened to people with learning disabilities and their families and developed with them an accessible info-sheet packed full of easy-to-read explanations about the lifesaving benefits of annual health checks.
“We want to support surgeries and health professionals and work towards increasing the take-up of these essential checks so that health outcomes for people with learning disabilities start to improve.”
More details and to the checklist can be found at
❝ It is especially sad to learn that people with learning disabilities are still in inappropriate care settings across the country Vicky Marriott, Healthwatch South Gloucestershire