Care Home heads conivicted for imprisoning learning disabled

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Thirteen directors, managers and carers have been convicted over a regime at residential homes in which adults with learning disabilities were imprisoned in isolation rooms.

Vulnerable residents of the homes in Devon were held in the bare seclusion rooms for hours and sometimes overnight, on occasions wetting or soiling themselves because there were no bathroom facilities.

Legal proceedings against leaders and staff from Atlas Project Team, which ran the two homes, have been going on for five years but the convictions can finally be reported after reporting restrictions were lifted.

At the start of the first trial, Andrew Langdon QC, prosecuting, alleged the residents had been treated like animals.

He said: “The view was taken that the residents had somehow learned how to behave badly. That behaviour had to be unlearned. If they were kept there [in the isolation rooms] long enough they would learn a lesson and change their behaviour. A bit like someone might try to cure the behaviour of a badly behaved animal.”

Bristol crown court was told that as well as sending residents to the isolation rooms, they were sometimes allegedly denied food, drink, fun activities and visits from residents. Once they were allowed out of the rooms they were ordered to carry out tasks such as cleaning to “test compliance”.

Langdon claimed residents were sent to the rooms at the Veilstone and Gatooma homes, both isolated former farmhouses, for “trivial reasons: staring at a staff member, facial twitches, asking questions repeatedly, missing a hair appointment could all be triggers for residents to be sent to the rooms”, he said.

Paul Hewitt, the founder of Atlas and a well-known figure in mental health who helped formulate national policy on caring for people with learning disabilities in the community, told the court he did not know residents were being locked up. He was convicted of a health and safety offence.

Hewitt was fined £12,500 and ordered to pay costs of £105,000. Jolyon Marshall, a director, was jailed for 28 months for conspiracy to falsely imprison, and perverting the course of justice.

Other members of the management team and staff were given suspended jail terms or other non-custodial sentences for various offences