Winterbourne View: learning disability providers have learned a crucial lesson
The launch of a quality code three years after the Winterbourne revelations means some good has come out of the scandal, says David Brindle of The Gaurdian
Three years ago next month, whistleblower Terry Bryan set in train a sequence of events that was to send a devastating shockwave through the adult care sector and culminated last week in the sale of what remained of the company he was working for.
That company was Castlebeck and the shockwave has become known as Winterbourne View, the name of its hospital facility for people with learning disabilities and autism near Bristol, where Bryan was a charge nurse and where he had witnessed what he described in an email to management as the "confrontational and aggressive" approach of named staff towards vulnerable patients.
The whole nation was to see such behaviour, and worse, on TV seven months later, after Bryan – his complaints having prompted no action by the company or regulatory bodies – approached BBC's Panorama team. An undercover reporter went into Winterbourne to film covertly and the resulting programme led to the prosecution and conviction of 11 staff, six of whom were jailed; the closure of the unit; the collapse of Castlebeck into administration; and, most significantly, a government decision to stop using similar hospitals in England and to find, by next June, new forms of care for 1,300 people languishing in them. The hospitals had sprung up since the rundown of long-stay learning disability institutions, and claimed to offer short-term assessment and treatment of people with challenging behaviour. In reality, care commissioners were using them routinely to "park" such people, often for years at a time. All too often, there was little assessment going on and still less treatment......
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