LOCKED UP FOR BEING AUTISTIC
MORE distraught parents of teenagers and young adults with autism and learning disabilities locked up in secure hospital units have stepped forward to beg for the release of their children.
Their pleas follow a Mail on Sunday investigation exposing how vulnerable people are being held in solitary confinement, fed through hatches like animals, violently restrained, and forcibly injected with drugs to sedate them.
‘Our children are being abducted by the state and we are powerless to speak out,’ said one mother, gagged by a court order from discussing her situation.
It has emerged that in one case, an 18year-old girl was strangled by another resident of a specialist unit for autism. The victim’s mental state deteriorated as she was held in secure centres.
At least 40 other people with autism and learning disabilities have died over the past three years in assessment and treatment units (ATUs). The units are supposed to keep people for short assessment periods, yet the average stay is five and a half years.
The mother of Tony Hickmott, who has autism, says he ‘never harmed anyone’ while living at home, was sent away for a supposed nine months, but instead has spent almost 18 years in ATUs.
Our revelations have sparked three official inquiries: by the Joint Committee on Human Rights in Parliament; by the Children’s Commissioner; and a Care Quality Commission review that Health Secretary Matt Hancock pledged would ‘be expedited and completed as quickly as is feasible’.
But Labour’s Shadow Care spokeswoman Barbara Keeley, who raised our reports last week in Parliament, has written to Mr Hancock demanding to know why his review into such costly and ineffective treatment is not reporting until March 2020.
She said: ‘These further cases of appalling abuse warrant immediate and decisive action from Ministers, not a review by the CQC, which will only confirm what we already know: that vulnerable people with learning disabilities and autism should be cared for in the community, not in barbaric conditions in private hospitals.’
It can cost up to £730,000 a year to keep someone in a secure unit. This newspaper has exposed how US healthcare firms, hedge funds and fat-cat charity chiefs have been accused by parents of viewing patients as ‘cash cows’ after muscling in on the lucrative sector.
The NHS has paid these operators more than £100 million in the past year. Yet a study by Dimensions, a not-for-profit care provider, found it costs between £161,000 and £172,000 to support a person with severe autism in the community. ‘We know people have better lives in their communities with the right support,’ said spokesman Alicia Wood.
Last week Joey Jacobs, chief executive of Arcadia – the US firm that bought the giant Priory group for £1.3 billion two years ago – was fired to ‘ accelerate momentum’ following a disappointing UK performance. He will receive a reported £8.2 million payout.