In early June the BBC Panorama programme showed a shocking film of the abuse dealt out to vulnerable patients at a hospital for learning disabilities. The hospital, Winterbourne View near Bristol, was run by Castlebeck, a private operator of this sort of facility.
Shortly after the broadcast Castlebeck apologised to the relatives of the individuals who had been the subject of systematic abuse and brutality whilst in their care, and closed the facility.
Six weeks later the Care Quality Commission, which had failed miserably to respond to a whistleblower’s complaints about the standards of care at Winterbourne View, said it had “serious concerns” about four other facilities run by Castlebeck, and that a further seven were “failing to comply with essential standards of quality and safety”.
Last week Castlebeck announced it was closing another facility in Bristol with immediate effect. Rose Villa, a rehabilitation centre for adults with learning disabilities was being closed, said Castlebeck, for “operational reasons” which it said were unrelated to a Care Quality Commission inspection and the fact that four staff had been suspended. Again, a desperately vulnerable client group had suffered abuse in a Castlebeck facility.
Today Castlebeck has announced the closure of a third facility, Arden Vale in Meriden in the West Midlands after a closure notice was served by the Care Quality Commission. The CQC report into Arden Vale showed a dehumanising and humiliating series of petty regulations imposed by staff on patients and an over use of physical restraint.
Castlebeck made a £31.3m profit on £85.2m revenues in the year to December 2009. Vast sums of public money are being pumped into the pockets of some very wealthy individuals. Around £3,500 a week is paid by the NHS and local authorities for every patient ‘cared for’ in one of Castlebeck’s facilities.
This is an issue that isn’t making the front page of the tabloids like phone hacking or the rioting of last week, but it is an epic scandal which should be commanding the attention of Andrew Lansley’s every waking minute. Why isn’t Lansley screaming from the rooftops about this? If two dozy buggers who conspired to hold a riot that didn’t take place get four years in chokey for their stupidity, when can we expect to see the people responsible for this actual abuse (and I don’t just mean those who carried it out, but those who allowed it to take place by their omissions) up in front of a court to explain their negligence?
I won’t hold my breath.
I quite agree that legal action should be considered agains the directors of firms in receipt of public money for which they fail to provide the requisite service agreed to. However, if the quango responsible for checking that they are doing the job properly is, itself, totally useless then I doubt that courts are going to uphold any charges.
Your lot have much to answer for in this respect with all those mad PFI schemes in which schools were built all over the place at vast and inflated expense and for which we will all be paying until we get shuffled off into one of those ghastly non-care homes! Let’s charge Brown & Balls, I say!
I agree in respect of the pathetic regulation, and it’s good to see right-wing commentators like yourself arguing for greater regulation. The failure to regulate he thieving toe rags in the financial sector is equally disgraceful. Sadly, the current bunch of tiffs are likely to be even more lax in regulating their wealthy friends though.
Again, I agree on PFI. I was opposing it when the Tories introduced it under Major, and Blair-Brown were equally complicit in lining the pockets of the private sector under the pretence of some sort of partnership.
Nice to see you are coming round to my point of view, Duffers.
Well said Bob. I can’t believe what these arrogant twats are getting away with. Members of the Bullingdon Club pontificating about the disgraceful anti-social behaviour of rioters/looters? Clegg excusing his youthful CRIMINALITY (burning down greenhouses full of rare, hand-reared cactii) as merely 16 year old drink-fuelled high spirits? The overwhelmingly lenient reaction to the industrial fiddling of expenses by the venal, hubristic arseholes populating practically every high office in Westminster? And I will include Labour in that as well.
Please spare me the serious voice, the sound-bite, the knee-jerk. You’ve all had your media training, we know where you’re coming from.
As for the checking of the Castlebecks of this world, well, as long as the box is ticked then everything is fine. There’ll be many, many more Castlebecks , they’ll just have different names, different directors but the same old, same old.
Sadly, when you introduce a profit-motive into the caring professions there tends to be a rush to maximise the profit and the poor sods relying on the care end up with the very basics – in terms of nourishment, accommodation and staffing. There’ll be more money spent on the glossy brochures than Gladys’s yearly food budget, and less attention paid to whether Gladys actually ate the glutinous shite proffered. But when the pre-arranged visit of the ‘inspectors’ arrives the wine flows, the piping hot, succulent meals are individually administered until every last morsel has gone, leaving the dumbstruck clientele incapable of articulate complaint.
And we pay through the bloody nose for this?
All in it together? Whatever!
The problem I have is what is the alternative to those that shut?
A silly point to make, but a serious point requiring an answer.
My view of local care by the local authority is that it is not beaten by anyone. The care facilities are excellent and well maintained (by a responsible authority) and the levels of staff training are unbeaten. The quality of care delivered is far superior than a private rival and the levels of support to the carer is beyond criticism.
The same can be said for all care delivered in the community by the local authority. The back up in the community is vastly superior to the private company offering care.
The problem is that we do not have that same level of commitment by Councillors who see local authority care delivery as a target for cuts and savings.
This may seem like a contradiction in the whole argument but it is in fact going on in all areas of this Country.
Private care cuts corners as a cloth for a cap and the end result is some form of abuse be it physical or time itself. It would be wrong to blame all care individuals for a single public prosecution but the private sector offering private care is and should be in the dock along with those who champion it in stead of a properly funded public care delivery system.
Well, if it were only a question of finances they would know that NHS care for learning disability patients is far cheaper. The facts is that the NHS were forced by their commissioners to close down what the Blair-Brown government referrred to as campus provision ie. small half dozen-bed community-based sites, costing around £2500 a week for a placement, whilst the private sector were encouraged to ‘factory farm’ LD units of 30 beds or more, paying minimum wage and with little or no training provision at £3,500 a head.
“a dehumanising and humiliating series of petty regulations imposed by staff on patients and an over use of physical restraint”.
With qualities like these I am surprised that Castlebeck has not tended a bid to operate private prisons.
At least the BBC is highlighting the abuse at HMP Long Lartin, Britain’s Gitmo, where one man has been in jail without charge and trial for 11 years and another for 7 years, for being suspected terrorists. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?
I was once next door to a murderer who’s cell card indicated he had been given a life sentence with a 9 year tariff.
Assuming that the murderer was released upon the tariff expiry, he served 2 years less than someone who is still innocent and being detained indefinitely. This takes some justification.
Thank god for the Human Rights Act 1998, these cases of abuse are rare. If David Cameron got his way and scrapped it, they would become the norm.
Well done Bob for highlighting the continuing abuse by Castlebeck.
I wonder why it took a tv reporter with a hidden camera to uncover the abuse.
A truly robust Care Quality Comission, especially having received the number of reports and allegations that it did, would surely have sent in its own undercover investigators.
Loads of other companies use test customers and secret shoppers to evaluate their servcies, why don’t CQC?
It’s worse than that Martin. The CQC knew, had been told about the abuse on at least two occasions by a whistleblower. They have powers to carry out unannounced inspections, and should have done so. The real test for these organisations would be if it were made compulsory for independent advocacy organisations to have unfettered and unaccompanied access to the users of the service, with the power to call in the CQC if they have suspicions that something is not right.