Disabled ‘still at risk’ despite care home scandal

FAMILIES hit by the Winterbourne View care home scandal have written to David Cameron accusing ministers of leaving disabled people still at risk of abuse five years on.

Four relations – backed by the heads of two charities and the leader of an inquiry into the affair – voiced “anger” at “painfully slow” progress in moving patients out of similar institutions.

People with learning disabilities continue to suffer “devastating” effects of being sent to live in centres far from home where they risk being unnecessarily restrained and drugged with antipsychotic medication, they said.

Norman Lamb, a former care minister, said the slow progress was a “shocking indictment” of the system.

An undercover BBC Panorama documentary in 2011 exposed abuse at the Winterbourne View private hospital near Bristol, with instances of frail and confused residents being pinned down by groups of staff, beaten, soaked with water, trapped under chairs and having their hair pulled and eyes poked.

Eleven staff pleaded guilty to neglect and ill treatment, and six were jailed. Winterbourne View was closed and ministers promised to transfer thousands of people out of similar units intended only for temporary care.

The most recent official “census” of patients with learning disabilities in England found thousands were still living in such institutions last year.

The letter, signed by Margaret Flynn, author of the serious case review, Jan Tregelles of Mencap, and Vivien Cooper of the Challenging Behaviour Foundation, said: “Today, around 3,500 people, including over 160 children, are still stuck in places like Winterbourne View; often hundreds of miles from home, and at risk of abuse. Lives have even been lost.”

An NHS spokesman said the numbers being discharged and having care reviewed had risen in the past year, but accepted progress had been too slow.