Scandal of the autistic youngsters locked in solitary confinement
Abused, drugged, fed through hatches in door...
HUNDREDS of people with autism and learning disabilities are being locked up in appalling conditions, routinely abused and stuffed into tiny, secluded padded cells, a Mail on Sunday investigation has found.
Devastated families are having children and young adults taken from them against their wishes and locked away – in one case for an astonishing 18 years.
Our shocking investigation found that confused teenagers are being fed through hatches in seclusion, forcibly injected with powerful drug cocktails to sedate them, and violently restrained by up to six adults at a time behind the locked doors of secretive units.
The scandal is due to broken political promises by the Government, bickering local officials, woeful care failures and profit-hungry private operators taking over a lucrative National Health Service sector. We can reveal:
Ministers have failed to meet pledges made after the 2011 Winterbourne View care abuse scandal to empty assessment and treatment units (ATUs) of people with learning disabilities by returning them to families and communities;
Latest figures show that 2,375 people with learning disabilities are still stuck in these supposedly short-stay units;
One man has been held an astonishing 18 years. His elderly parents say the experience has been a nightmare and that their son is very depressed, crying when t heir weekly visits end;
The number of children in ATUs doubled over the past three years – yet powerless parents are routinely gagged by courts and some have been threatened with having homes seized if they speak out;
Families complain of regular abuse, bullying, cruelty, over-use of physical restraint, poorly-trained staff and use of powerful drug ‘coshes’ to sedate people;
The NHS spends up to £13,000 a week per person kept in ATUs – but experts say most should not be in secure hospitals and that supported outside living would be better and cheaper;
US hedge funds have muscled in on a sector worth almost half a billion pounds annually – while one charity operator gave its departed chief executive a pay package worth almost £1 million over two years.
One distraught father, gagged by court order from public discussion of his son’s case, said: ‘I only wanted respite help for three days, and that was three years ago. Now my son is having drugs forced down his throat. It makes me want to cry 24 hours a day and punch walls.’
Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat MP and former Care Minister in the Coalition, said there had been a total failure of the system, adding: ‘This is inhumane, immoral and breaching people’s human rights.’
Lamb intervened in one case of a 15- year- old girl with complex autism sent to an ATU. ‘The more she became confused, the worse her behaviour,’ he said. ‘She ended up ripping off her clothes and running around naked.’
The girl was regularly restrained and shut in seclusion but Mr Lamb helped obtain her freedom. ‘She behaved like an animal because she was treated like one,’ he said. ‘But from the moment she left, she never needed to be restrained again.’ Another woman with autism held for more than three years in an ATU said she was even stripped of her clothes and watched by male and female staff. ‘I felt so degraded and violated,’ she said.
Isabelle Garnett, an autism campaigner whose teenage son suffered terribly when taken into an ATU for almost two years, said people with autism and learning disabilities were placed in mental health hospitals due to lack of appropriate services in local communities.
‘Once they are admitted to hospital, people with autism are set up to fail,’ she said. ‘Being ripped away from all that they know and all who love them causes yet more stress.
‘The inappropriate hospital envir onment, care and t r eatment increases anxiety and consequently there is more challenging behaviour. This is the most vicious of circles: the hospital becomes the cause of the child’s continued detention.’
Tory MP Charles Walker, who has campaigned on mental health issues, said: ‘This seems like a system designed to burn through lives and burn through money.’
Powerless parents are gagged by courts SHUT AWAY AND TREATED LIKE ANIMALS
WHY are some promises never kept? Why do some scandals never go away? Again and again we are confronted with the disgusting evidence of inhumanity, often accompanied by greed, in the treatment of the vulnerable. It is exposed. Individuals are punished. Ministers pledge that it will stop. And then it happens again.
Sometimes it is the old who are the victims of callous neglect, forced sedation and humiliation by ill-trained staff. On this occasion, the shocking treatment is being dished out to teenagers with autism or learning difficulties, locked up indefinitely like maximumsecurity prisoners, pumped full of potent mind-bending drugs, deliberately humiliated, deprived of fresh air and exercise, even handcuffed.
To make things worse, this misery is being inflicted in homes owned and run by, in many cases, American-owned hedge funds. They are charging the taxpayer up to £13,000 a week per patient – more than it would cost to stay at a firstclass hotel – for treatment and conditions that would disgrace Wormwood Scrubs. This helps to provide six-figure pay for senior executives, while the actual care staff receive wretched wages just above £8 an hour, hardly likely to attract dedicated or skilled employees.
The Government knows this is going on, knows it is wrong, and has already pledged to stop it. It is seven years since similar mistreatment was exposed at the Winterbourne View private hospital, and several staff members pleaded guilty to multiple offences against patients. It was later found that there had been many previous incidents and missed warnings. A promise was made to empty so-called Assessment and Treatment Units (ATUs) of people with learning difficulties by returning them to their families or the community. Yet more than 2,000 such people are still in ATUs. It is inexcusable. As the former Coalition Care Minister, Norman Lamb, puts it, the way these young people are being dealt with is inhumane and immoral, and breaches their rights.
And The Mail on Sunday’s report describes several distressing and even heartbreaking cases of teenagers, supposedly placed in such ATUs for a few weeks or months yet unable to get out, caught in a tyrannical and obstructive nightmare of drugging and restraint, so that the longer they stay there, the longer they have to stay there. Visits intended to last a few weeks turn into years. One has spent almost 18 years in the custody of ATUs.
One possible, sinister explanation for this is that the private units charging huge fees to the NHS have a vested interest in renewing the control orders that compel their patients to stay. For them, each patient is a source of extra cash to pay for their large salaries. This is big business. The budget for looking after people with learning difficulties in ATUs is close to half a billion pounds, a cost the Government would surely like to reduce. So, if government policy is to close these units, why are big investors buying them up?
The parents of those caught up in these nasty gulags are almost powerless to act. The young victims are often severely institutionalised by the treatment they receive. Yet it is clear from experience that most of those involved would prosper if looked after at home.
The only solution to this is firm, uncompromising Government action. Health Secretary Matt Hancock is personally aware of the problem. He has the power to ensure that the unkept pledges of 2011 are fulfilled, to override the obstruction of the special interests involved, and to see to it that this shameful mistreatment of innocent, unhappy people is ended for ever.