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Last November @MattHancock promised me that he intended to resolve the scandal of people with autism and learning disabilities locked up in abusive detention. He pledged to free the first 400 people in six months and provide a discharge plan for all others held within 12 months.
Now we learn the numbers incarcerated are rising, not falling. Eight years after Winterbourne View, following several more abuse scandals, there were 2,100+ people held in July 2020. Many are denied basic human rights: routinely abused, locked in solitary & forcibly medicated
Everyone accepts people should not be held in psychiatric institutions simply due to inadequate social care. Average total length of stay in inpatient units is 5.6 years. This destroys the lives of those locked up and devastates families. It is little better than Bedlam
Pandemic should have turbo-charged the discharge process but instead the state-sanctioned barbarism grows worse. Sadly this crisis has exposed how ministers and officials see social care as of secondary importance - with fatal consequences for many elderly and disabled people
Today a review was published into 50 deaths of people with learning disabilities in the pandemic. It is another alarming glimpse into 'prejudicial attitudes towards care, treatment and judgements about ceilings of care' in the NHS http://www.bristol.ac.uk/media-library/sites/sps/leder/Summary%20of%20findings%2050%20LeDeR%20reveiws%20of%20deaths%20related%20to%20COVID19.pdf
Grim, grim, grim.
Last November I asked in my @theipaper column if that pledge was genuine or just an opportunistic pre-election ploy to stymie criticism? The answer now seems clear: @matthancock used people with autism & learning disabilities as political props. How sickening
Last November I asked in my @theipaper column if that pledge was genuine or just an opportunistic pre-election ploy to stymie criticism? The answer now seems clear: @matthancock used people with autism & learning disabilities as political props. How sickening
