UK secure room institutional lockup of autistics for profit

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Jade Hutchings was a child who adored acting and animals, friends and family. But she suffered from anxiety and sometimes struggled to fit in socially, so her loving family rallied round with trips to the seaside, community events and outings to historic attractions.

After she hit adolescence, she became a target for bullying by a group of boys at her school in Birmingham.

The attacks sent the teenager spiralling into depression and made her feel suicidal, so her parents sought medical help.

At 14 she ended up in a psychiatric hospital, where she was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome – a form of autism often missed in young women that can leave them with severe emotional and social difficulties.

Her parents were told she would be away six months at most.

But 13 years later, Jade is still locked away – like the many others with autism and learning disabilities as reported by this newspaper.

Jade has been held in lonely seclusion, forced to wear just a rubber gown and pumped full of powerful drugs. She has piled on weight and her state of mind is deteriorating, trapped amid the tumult and chaos of a secure psychiatric unit, say her family.

She was allowed to leave one unit briefly when she travelled to Abu Dhabi and Paris on foreign holidays, which she calls her last time of freedom.

She has self-harmed while locked up but never attacked anyone else – yet is seen to be such a risk she has not been allowed outside beyond a tiny courtyard for four years. She was not permitted to visit her beloved grandfather as he lay dying from cancer, nor even allowed out for a short walk in the park with her family and their dog.

Linda, 54, a support worker for people with acquired brain injuries, said: ‘When she went in at first we were desperate, but they have taken away her childhood. She went in as a teenager and now she is 27 years old. Where is the humanity in what they are doing to her? ‘It is so painful seeing her friends go to university and settle down with partners. One has a young daughter.

Her story is a tragedy. Yet she is just one among hundreds of teenagers and young adults with autism and learning disabilities torn from their families and forced into secure mental health units that make massive profits for their distant owners. The Mail on Sunday has revealed that, despite repeated Government pledges to reduce the numbers of such people in secure units, private firms are opening up new centres and fast expanding their share of a lucrative health sector.

Latest accounts show that last year Elysium Healthcare (Farndon) earned revenues from the NHS of £7 million, giving them operating profits of £1.6 million.

Elysium is backed by BC Partners, a private equity group, through a firm in low-tax Luxembourg. Although only launched in December 2016, it operates already at 55 English locations and last year handed £361,774 to one of its directors. The most recent annual report for Elysium Healthcare (Farndon) said the firm would ‘focus on delivering growth’ through expansion and ‘leveraging the investment’ to ‘attract new patients’.

It pays some support staff at Farndon less than £16,000 a year.

Little wonder that campaigners fear patients are seen as cash cows to be milked by a flawed system at the expense of taxpayers.

After a suicide bid at school, Jade was taken to a psychiatric unit for patients with eating disorders.

She started to mimic them in an attempt to fit in – a common trait for females with Asperger’s – and shed so much weight she had to be force-fed through a tube.

The family was told Jade needed to be sectioned and sent to St Andrew’s, a major psychiatric centre in Northampton.

‘Social services said if we did not agree they would take us to court and have us legally removed as nearest relatives,’ said Linda. ‘They were threatening us. It was terrifying, like being beaten with a stick.’

Jade received decent treatment at St Andrew’s, where she could enjoy the grounds, for three years. Then she was moved to a specialist autism unit near Bath that allowed her out for shopping jaunts with her sisters and those family holidays abroad.

But then she was sent to another secure unit outside Cambridgeshire where, her parents said, she was locked for weeks in a secluded attic room with just a television and rubber-sheeted bed – and clad in a rubberised gown.

She was also restrained physically, which was very traumatic for a girl who had been bullied.’ Next she was shifted to a privately run unit in Wales, where a mental health tribunal asked Birmingham City Council, her home funding authority, to look into a community-based care package.

Instead, two years ago, she was sent to Farndon.

One reason for the failure of Transforming Care – an initiative launched after a 2011 abuse scandal at Winterbourne View in Gloucestershire to get people with autism and learning disabilities out of such places – is that cash-strapped local authorities prefer to see the NHS paying for psychiatric units rather than fund care packages in the community. Yet community support is often more effective for patients and cheaper for taxpayers.

One psychiatrist told the family that private health providers often say anything to keep their patients locked up. ‘The end justifies the means,’ said Linda.

She is medicated, really tired, and sleeps a lot. She put on loads of weight due to powerful anti- psychotic medicines and lack of exercise, then they say she does not have the capacity to go for a walk with the dog. She sleeps and watches TV.’

he father of an autistic teenager who says his 17-year-old daughter has been locked in a 12-foot cell in a psychiatric hospital for two years is taking the NHS for ‘torturing’ his child and depriving her of basic human rights.

Bethany, 17, has been kept in a 12-by-10-foot cell at an assessment and treatment unit (ATU) in Birmingham for 23 months.

Her father Jeremy said the first time he saw the conditions in which his child was being kept, he thought it was ‘like a scene from Hannibal Lecter.’

Bethany has not been allowed to leave her cell - which contains only a chair and a mattress - and her parents, who can only visit once a week, must speak to her through a hatch in the door.

They have not hugged in two years.

The cell contains a small ensuite bathroom but no door, so staff at the centre can see her at all times. She is passed her food on a tray through the hatch.

Bethany, who has been sectioned under the Mental Health Act, was moved to the isolation cell shortly after she arrived at the institution, run by St Andrews Healthcare, because she struggled to cope with the other patients.

But Jeremy says the tiny room was designed as a short-term measure to isolate those undergoing a massive emotional break down, not for long-term nursing.

Bethany was moved out of the room last Friday, after her case started to receive massive media attention when her father spoke to BBC Radio 4, but Jeremy - who fears she will be returned to the cell shortly - is suing her carers.

He is launching legal action against NHS England, Walsall Council, St Andrews Healthcare and Walsall CCG, citing a breach of Beth’s human rights, right to freedom from torture, and right to privacy.

‘Those rooms are designed to allow people who are in massive emotional break down states to be somewhere safe for a very short period of time. To keep them safe while they get over their anxious state or meltdown.

‘They are not designed for long term nursing. Beth has been in there for 23 months.’

‘They say that if Beth is removed from the cell, it is likely that she will be too upset to go back in which would therefore be challenging for the nurses so they don’t open the door.’

Jeremy told the Metro that St Andrews does not understand his daughter’s condition and is not treating it adequately.

She moved out of the family home at the age of nine to her first residential school with other autistic children but struggled to cope with the boundaries, and the placement collapsed.

Her anxiety spiralled and a total of 17 different placements, all autism specialists, failed before she was moved to St Andrews.

She is especially susceptible to sensory overload, and when that happens her behaviour can become 'extremely challenging', her father said.

The truck driver from Harbourne said St Andrews are using Beth’s condition under the Mental Health Act to remove her rights.

Will they do that to me?

I doubt it. You are literally “high functioning” , gainfully employed and in a seroius relationship(engaged if I remember correctly).

The poor girl in the post sounded rather high-functioning. What if I suffer with suicidal thoughts later in life and get put away and treated like that? I didn't know they did such a thing here in the UK. I've known people to be far worse than that and weren't treated like that at all.

Well, here's a note to self:

Don't seek help if I ever feel depressed and suicidal. They might take me away and lock me up.

Kyle Gibbon, 31, from Kemnay, who has autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), has been in the hospital at Carstairs almost continuously since he was 18, with some of Scotland’s most serious criminals.

He did not have a criminal record when he was sent to the state hospital – with his mum Tracey launching a crowdfunding appeal to pay for the costs associated with an appeal.

Aberdeenshire West MSP Alexander Burnett has appealed for people in the north-east to help secure the release of Kyle by donating to the appeal.

The 31-year-old had been a patient at Royal Cornhill in Aberdeen and was due to be allowed to leave to go to supported accommodation, but following concerns over his care he was sectioned and transferred to the South Lanarkshire facility where he has been since 2010. Kyle’s family say he has become institutionalised since to the extent he can’t perform many tasks he did when first entering the system aged 18.

A spokeswoman for the hospital said: “Due to data protection / confidentiality we are unable to provide any information on specific patients or staff, past or present.”