Mersey Care’s Clock View development, which helps boost local mental health provision
About 500 mentally ill people travel more than 30 miles for an inpatient bed every month, such is the scarcity of local provision.
My piece in the Guardian today reflects longstanding concerns most recently outlined in a report from the independent commission into adult acute mental healthcare, supported by the Royal College of Psychiatrists and led by ex-NHS chief executive Nigel Crisp. The report demands include a deadline of October 2017 to stop the practice of sending severely ill patients miles from home.
Some areas are blazing a trail, however, when it comes to boosting local acute beds. Existing examples of good practice include Mersey Care NHS trust’s £25m purpose-built, short-stay mental health inpatient unit, Clock View. Then there’s Tile House supported living project in King’s Cross, London, which reduces hospital admissions for people with serious mental health conditions, aiming to move them into independent housing and work.
As my piece on the Guardian website today explains, community nurses can be employed by NHS trusts, GPs, charities such as Dementia UK or private providers delivering NHS services. However, their numbers are falling. The decline might be attributed to primary care trusts transferring provision to other organisations under the government’s Transforming Community Services programme because those nurses moving to non-NHS providers are not captured in relevant workforce data.
The fall in numbers coincides with healthcare reforms that make their role even more important. “District nurses will be likely to play a significant role in the NHS reforms, particularly around new models of care that shift more care into the community,” according to Rachael Addicott, senior research fellow at health thinktank The King’s Fund.
Claire Dyer’s family campaigned for her release from an inpatient unit 250 miles away. Claire features in today’s Guardian piece (thanks to Cath Dyer for the photo of Claire, who loves both music and Christmas)Four years after the abuse of people with learning disabilities at Winterbourne View (and 30 years after the start of care in the community and 20 years after the influential Mansell Report), NHS England recently unveiled a £45m plan to move people out of institutional care and back into communities. “Homes not hospitals”, is the laudable vision.
This is where grand ambition contrasts with grim actuality, as I explain in a piece in today’s Guardian.
A report leaked to the BBC and sparked by the preventable death of 18-year-old Connor Sparrowhawk in a Southern Health Trust inpatient unit, revealed that the trust failed to investigate some 1,000 deaths in its care over a four year period.
Then yesterday, the Learning Disability Census Report 2015 from the Health and Social Care Information Centre revealed there 3,000 people in inpatient units – 3,500 if you count those “unreported” in the figures (more on this here from Mencap and the Challenging Behaviour Foundation, and the HSCIC explains the discrepancy under its editors’ note number eight here).
Déjà vu? In 2013, according to the HSCIC, there were also around 3,000 people in inpatient units (in fact half those in units today, were also there for the 2013 headcount). And a previous £2.86m government-funded improvement programme from the Local Government Association and NHS England tried but failed to move everyone out of such units by 1 June 2014.
The census, established in response to the abuse at Winterbourne View, also shows the average length of patients’ stay is five years, there is heavy use of antipsychotic medication (almost three-quarters of people – despite the fact that less than a third have a diagnosed psychotic disorder) and more than half self-harm, have accidents or suffer assault, restraint or seclusion. Around a fifth of all inpatients are at least 100km from home.
Reading these stark facts would lead most of us to conclude that if you have a learning disability, you’re less likely to be cared for properly in life, unlikely to have your premature death investigated thoroughly – but if you’re lucky, you might be included in a census (depending on the data collection methodology etc etc).
I’m more pragmatic than negative. My sister, Raana, who has a learning disability, leads a busy, active life where her choice is central to her daily life. There are many organisations out there doing great stuff. I’ve met people who have moved from institutions into supported housing in towns and cities, with the help of truly brilliant, hardworking care staff. I’ve spoken to families who feel involved in shaping the care of their son, daughter or sibling, some with very complex needs. I’ve read – and written – reports outlining good practice in ensuring people get out of these places. While there’s still a postcode lottery at play, “we know what good looks like”, as stressed by many social care experts I speak to.
So as I began writing today’s Guardian piece, I’d expected a narrative of cautious optimism. As I came to finishing it, the Mazars report was leaked and new figures showed little change in the number of people in inpatient units, hence the headline above this post.
The report into Southern Health by auditors Mazars – which as I write, is still not published, despite making headlines and being debated in parliament – has renewed concerns over institutional disablism, led to calls for a national inquiry and, as this piece by Andy McNicoll underlines, provoked widespread criticism over the response of the trust and its chief executive (for links to some powerful blogging and commentary, search Twitter for #mazars or #JusticeforLB).
Katherine Runswick-Cole, senior research fellow at Manchester Metroplitan University’s research institute for health and social change, suggests that until the dehumanisation of people with learning disabilities ends, inadequate care – irrespective of care setting – may linger (related issues include, for example, a hospital listing a patient’s learning disability among reasons for sticking a “do not resuscitate” order on his file).
Recent cases in supported living and residential care – non-institutional environments – reflect this concern.
In January, Thomas Rawnsley’s family will attend a pre-inquest meeting into his death. The 20-year-old, who had Down’s syndrome and autism, was taken to hospital from a residential care home in Sheffield earlier this year, but died two days later.
His mother, Paula, says: “Thomas had great empathy and compassion, he always wanted to make people laugh. If people had taken time to get to know him they would’ve found that out.”
Robin Kitt Callender, a care home resident who was severely autistic and partially sighted, with communication difficulties, died on 23 May 2012, less than 24 hours after finally being admitted to hospital. An inquest in March ruled that she died from natural causes contributed to by neglect, with failings by her GP and hospital staff. Robin’s sister Karen has since launched the Casualties of Care campaign for better rights for people and families.
Dismissive attitudes towards people with learning disabilities extend to their families. As Deborah Coles, director of Inquest, has said, the Mazars report only came about “because of the tireless fight for the truth by the family of Connor Sparrowhawk”.
Meanwhile, back with the grand vision – well meaning and welcome as it is – NHS England says it is working closely with regulator the Care Quality Commission to prevent any new assessment and treatment institutions from being created. But in yet more ambition vs. actuality, the Public Accounts Committee has just criticised the CQC for being ineffective.
Connor Sparrowhawk’s mother Sara Ryan, a senior researcher and autism specialist at Oxford University’s Nuffield department of primary care health sciences, says that the Mazars report “confirms that learning disabled people don’t count in life or death” (see more on this on Sara’s blog). And this post by Chris Hatton suggests some “required reading for anyone wanting to understand the issues involved in premature deaths of people with learning disabilities”.
Hard to disagree with the conclusion of Katherine Runswick-Cole who said when I interviewed her, “the pattern is abuse, inquiry, report, repeat”.
Ports of entry like Kent and Croydon look after a disproportionate number of child asylum seekers, and government funding doesn’t cover all the costs, as I explain in a piece on the Guardian’s social care pages.
Many concerns were raised at the National Children’s and Adults Services Conference in Bournemouth in October, and are reflected in recent research from Brighton University. This describes “an extremely uneven distribution” of unaccompanied minors. A Freedom of Information request reveals that seven out of 150 English councils look after 43% of all unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.
In Kent, there are 1,384 unaccompanied asylum-seeking young people, including 982 under-18s; more than a third of all looked-after children.
Peter Oakford, cabinet member for specialist children’s services says: “It’s been the most difficult year Kent county council has ever experienced regarding unaccompanied asylum seeking children … This places enormous pressures on staff in services within the council, foster carers and education services as well as all our partner agencies like the police and health.”
Amid the debate about dispersal schemes and funding shortfalls, Kent’s latest figures reveal the human cost; 180 children do not have an allocated social worker and are still waiting for a full assessment.
Michael Baron, a National Autistic Society founder parent, whose son Timothy is 60, says of the concept of “a good death”: “At the age of 86, I want that for myself, but just as much I want that end of life conversation for people on the autism spectrum like my son.”
Michael, who is frequently asked to speak at conferences on the issue of ageing, autism and end of life care, has just contributed to what he calls “necessary and timely” guidance on end of life care for people with autism or a learning disability which is to be published on Friday – my Guardian piece here explains more.
The guidance from the British Institute of Learning Disability (BILD), Peaceful, Pain Free and Dignified: palliative and end-of-life-care for people on the autism spectrum, is unique due to its autism-specific focus and its step-by-step descriptions of how health and social care staff can offer better care.
“As his family, we don’t want the manner of Timothy’s death to be decided solely by others,” explains Michael. “He may be disabled and lack legal capacity but nonetheless, a ‘good death’ involves meaningful conversations [between individuals, families and staff] that acknowledge the absence of legal rights but the enduring presence of human rights. Families should be consulted [throughout end of life care] and no decision should be made which has not already been discussed, that is the minimum human right to which someone is entitled to.”
The UK is home to around 1.5 million learning disabled people, but the real figure, including the undiagnosed, may be higher. BILD says that by 2030, there will be a 30% increase in the number of adults with learning disabilities over 50 using social care (no figures exist for older autistic adults). This population faces health inequalities; the 2013 Department of Health-funded confidential inquiry into premature deaths of people with learning disabilities found that people die on average 16 years earlier than they should, because of poor diagnosis and treatment.
“We all wish for a pain free, peaceful and dignified end to our lives,” says Lesley Barcham, BILD’s ageing well project manager, “but for people with learning disabilities or autism, who may not be able to speak up for themselves, it can feel like this isn’t something they can control.”The publication stresses how autism or a learning disability affects end-of-life care. People may have verbal and non-verbal communication difficulties, for example.
Some support exists – advice on helping bereaved people with learning disabilities and the voluntary PCPLD Network (Palliative Care for People with Learning Disabilities) connecting disability and palliative care professionals – but learning disability end-of-life care has a low profile. A recent European Association for Palliative Care taskforce report on people with intellectual disabilities, describes “a largely invisible population with hidden needs”, warning of “a risk that their needs are therefore not seen as a priority, or even as a problem”.
As Ferguson says, there is a much wider question at stake. “It’s a much bigger issue about early diagnosis and early treatment planning for vulnerable individuals who struggle with self-advocacy…People with a learning disability or autism should have access to the same care that the rest of us do”.
* You can read more about how Timothy Baron and the first Society for Autistic Children – which became the National Autistic Society – in this good piece by his sister, Saskia, a journalist and TV producer.
Working with memory triggers in a reminiscence arts session (photograph: Age Exchange)
By 2025 there will be one million people with dementia in the UK, according to the Alzheimer’s Society; a project I reported on today for the Guardian online is proving the impact of arts-based therapy on people with the condition.
Take Eddie (not his real name). When he first met arts practitioner Jill, from London-based arts group Age Exchange, he was withdrawn and uncommunicative.
Eyes downcast, head bowed, hands clasped and legs crossed; Eddie, an introverted wheelchair user, had been in a dementia care home for a decade when he began sessions Jill.
Over six weekly reminiscence arts sessions – work that explores memories using creative activity – Jill noticed how Eddie became “awake, sitting upright in his wheelchair, trying to talk, being better at regulating his mood and behaviour … He felt safe enough to allow himself to express some of these stored up energies and feelings through movement and making sounds which freed him and allowed him to start opening up and connecting with people.”
A simple gesture after the final session – previously unimaginable – reflected the transformation. Jill recalls: “I was very touched as we said goodbye; he extended his right hand towards me, I took it and we shook hands.”
“The cabbage has a brain,” is, it’s safe to say, not the response that Jane Campbell’s prospective employers expected when they commented on her encyclopedic knowledge of social care during an interview for a new job.
That job, as founding executive chair of the Social Care Institute for Excellence in 2001, is just one of many high profile roles the 56-year-old cross bench peer (Baroness Jane Campbell of Surbiton, to give her the full title) has had in a career spanning some of the most pivotal moments in disability rights.
Campbell is one of the most influential figures in UK disability rights but there is still more than a hint of origins as a grassroots activist about her, as I explain in an interview for today’s Guardian.
For example, she recently resisted the temptation, she says, to join a protest she spotted against the government’s closure of the independent living fund (ILF) on her way into the House of Lords. The £320m programme that funds 18,000 disabled people’s community-based care was axed last month; Campbell, who campaigned for its creation 30 years ago, had spearheaded the fight to save it.
This is why, as Campbell told me, it is vital that disability be seen as a human rights issue: “If I can do anything in my life, it is to bring disability out of the medical model and dump it where it should be – right back in society.”
One recent success was to bring a private members bill to ensure that people with disabilities who are supported by councils will still get that support if they move to another local authority.
The full interview is here but, just for the record, this potted version of Campbell’s CV reflects why she has been awarded not one, but two, lifetime achievement awards (from human rights organization Liberty in 2009 and this week’s one from social justice thinktank Bevan Foundation), an MBE, a DBE and two honorary degrees:
June 2015-present: member, post-legislative scrutiny select committee, Equality Act 2010, disability provisions
2007-present: independent crossbench peer, House of Lords
2006-09: chair, disability committee, and commissioner, Equality and Human Rights Commission
2008-2014: co-chair, All Party Parliamentary Disability Group
2008-2013: member, House of Lords appointments commission
2010-2012: member, House of Lords joint committee on human rights
2009-2011: chair, Independent Living Scrutiny Group, Office for Disability Issues (ODI), DWP
2008-2012: chair, Advisory Group on Right to Control, ODI
2008-2009: member, standing commission on Carers
2006-2009: chair, Disability Committee, and commissioner, Equality and Human Rights Commission
2006-2007: chair of the Independent Living Review Expert Panel, ODI
2001-2005: executive chair, Social Care Institute for Excellence
2000-2007: commissioner, Disability Rights Commission
1996-2012: co-director (to 2000), then trustee, National Centre for Independent Living
1994-1996: independent consultant on direct payments
1991-1995: co-chair British Council of Disabled People
1988-1994: director of training, London Boroughs Disability Resource Team
1987-1988: principal disability advisor, London Borough of Hounslow
1986-1987: disability training development officer, London Boroughs Disability Resource Team
1984-1986: equal opportunities liaison officer, Greater London Council
This weekend, I watched a film that should never have had to be made, about a young man who should never have died, featuring people who should never have experienced what they’ve been through.
If you follow this blog regularly, you’ve probably already seen the powerful film, The Tale of Laughing Boy, which was released on Saturday.
If you haven’t seen it then, for the reasons stressed in my opening lines, please spare 15 minutes to watch it.
Better still, watch, imagine and act, as the film’s concluding message urges its viewers.
The film is about the life of Connor Sparrowhawk (aka Laughing Boy). Connor, who had autism, a learning disability and epilepsy, was 18 when he died just over two years ago in Slade House, an assessment and treatment unit run by Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust.
He drowned in the bath on 4 July 2013, an entirely preventable death, as proved by an independent report demanded by his family. I covered the family’s experience here and if you don’t know his mother Sara Ryan’s blog, these extracts published in the Guardian reflect a little of what the family has been through.
Two years after Connor died, the family is still waiting for answers, a police investigation is ongoing and the outrage over his death has led to a powerful campaign, Justice for LB. It has also driven proposals for a new bill to boost the rights of people with learning disabilities and their families (see also this brilliant gallery featuring artwork created as part of the campaign).
The Tale of Laughing Boy should be required viewing for – well, for everyone, actually.
The issues it raises touch not just families of people with learning disabilities or people with learning disabilities themselves. The film is relevant not simply to professionals who work in health and social care or to politicians and policy makers who focus on these areas. In fact, Connor’s story begs the question of how society values (or rather, undervalues) people with learning disabilities and how we, as a collective bunch of human(e) beings, can (and should) positively respond.
The film, produced by self-advocacy charity My Life My Choice and Oxford Digital Media paints a warm, affectionate picture of Connor from childhood to young adulthood. Interviews, photographs and home movies celebrate Connor’s life as well as demanding answers about his death. It is a short, clear, accessible, arresting film – warm, beautiful, funny, and moving.
Connor’s family and friends speak with searing honesty about about the impact he made on their lives, and about the difficulty in his support (which is what triggered his admission into the unit). The teenager emerges as an engaging, entertaining, popular young character with a love of humour and a passion for music and buses.
Inspiring and amusing anecdotes show how much loved Connor was and is by his parents, siblings, grandparents, friends and support staff; one of his brothers recalls Connor’s claim that their mother was breaching his human rights by getting him to do the washing up.
Rich, Connor’s stepfather, describes the proposed new bill that the Justice for LB movement has sparked.
Rich explains that the objective is “to change the way in which the law works…At the moment local authorities and the NHS and other providers can pretty much put people where they want, what our bill proposes is that you simply will not be able to do that you will have to take full regard of the individual’s desire and wishes into account before making them a placement in residential accomodation…the bill tries to at least ensure or encourage that the knowledge, the love, the affection, the care, the experience that families have isn’t ignored by providers and is a full part of the process”
As Connor’s mother Sara says, it is “shameful” that there is a need to campaign “to give a certain set of people the same rights as everybody else”. Her son’s death, she adds, was terrible, wasteful, careless and preventable.
I wasn’t able to attend the launch of the film but Kate at My Life My Choice was kind enough to ask two of the contributors to the film, Tyrone and Shane, both of whom have learning disabilities, for their thoughts so I could add them to this post. Tyrone said: “Connor was a happy person – always talking about buses. I feel sorry that he died and wish it didn’t happen.” He also said that “taking part in the filming was fun.” Shane just wanted to reiterate “It’s terrible that this happened.”
In the film, it is another My Life My Care trustee, Tommy, who makes a powerful statement of the obvious; someone with epilepsy should never have been left alone in the bath. He says simply: “It’s not rocket science”.
Anila Jolly and her older brother Sunil pictured recently
I’m so grateful to Anila Jolly (pictured above, with her brother Sunil) for speaking so frankly about her relationship with her sibling.
As she says, siblings of disabled adults are “largely invisible” to care providers, but their “insight and perspective can be valuable”.
There’s more on these issues in a piece on the Guardian’s social care network today; 1.7 million adults in the UK have grown up with a disabled brother or sister but campaigners say their support needs and caring role are overlooked.
My piece today focuses on the work of Sibs, the UK’s only charity for siblings of children and adults with a lifelong learning disability.
Sibs’ call for greater recognition for this comparatively invisible group is timely given the next tranche of welfare cuts, says its chief executive Monica McCaffrey – “people who don’t have critical or substantial need will have little or no support … siblings will have to ensure people are safe and we want them to have a voice within adult social care.”
In addition, the role of siblings should be seen in the context of Carers Week next week and the are growing calls for families to be fully involved in the care of disabled relatives (take the campaigning LB bill , for example).
You can read more here about siblings’ distinct role and how care providers and commissioners often underestimate their contribution.
Working-age ill-health costs the UK economy an annual £100bn, and in a piece for the Guardian online, I give a snapshot of what some employers are doing to improve the health of their staff.
It might be easy to dismiss lunchtime yoga sessions or in-house physio clinics as optional extras (or a “perk”) but the stats on workplace illness suggests a focus on wellbeing makes economic sense. More days are lost through staff sickness in the NHS than elsewhere in the public sector (according to the government’s 2009 Boorman Report) and sick leave costs the health service £1.7bn a year.
Employers are starting to recognise their public health role; almost 400 organisations have, according to latest figures, pledged support for the Department of Health’s public health “responsibility deal”.
You can read the full piece, part of a supplement on physiotherapy, here.
