In 2011 Panorama’s exposé of Winterbourne view shocked the nation. It led to the Government pledge to move all people with learning disabilities and/or autism inappropriately placed in such institutions into community care by June this 2014.
Three years on, not only has that movement not been achieved, but there are still more people being admitted to such institutions than are being discharged.
This summer Simon Stevens, CEO of NHS England, asked Sir Stephen Bubb to lead a review exploring how a new national framework of support might be delivered locally, in order to allow the growth of community provision required to move people out of inappropriate institutional care.
In his report Sir Stephen sets out a roadmap for action. The top-line recommendations are:
- To urgently close inappropriate in-patient care institutions;
- A Charter of Rights for people with learning disabilities and/or autism and their families;
- To give people with learning disabilities and their families a ‘right to challenge’ decisions and the right to request a personal budget;
- A requirement for local decision-makers to follow a mandatory framework that sets out who is responsible, for which services and how they will be held to account, including improved data collection and publication;
- Improved training and education for NHS, local government and provider staff;
- To start a social investment fund to build capacity in community-based services, to enable them to provide alternative support and empowering people with learning disabilities by giving them the rights they deserve in determining their care.
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In a new report published on 26 November, social impact investment company Resonance called for Government to commit £30 million to a “Life in the Community” Social Investment Fund. The report, ‘Winterbourne View and Social Investment’, was commissioned by the Social Investment Business and Big Society Capital, as part of the remit of the committee established by the CEO of the NHS, Simon Stevens, and chaired by Sir Stephen Bubb, to commission a framework to transform services for people with learning disabilities. It outlines a third sector solution to the Winterbourne View problem: namely, over 3000 people with learning difficulties around the country, who are residing in inpatient facilities, where personal, health system and societal outcomes are often very poor.
More information and a copy of the report are available here.
