Hundreds of Autistics locked away and violently abused in UK

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ASPartOfMe
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28 Oct 2018, 2:21 am

Scandal of the autistic youngsters locked in solitary confinement: Hundreds of children are being held in appalling conditions and routinely abused in secluded padded cells Devastated families are having young adults taken from them and locked away Investigation found teenagers were being forcibly injected violently restrained

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Hundreds of people with autism and learning disabilities are being locked up in appalling conditions, routinely abused and stuffed into tiny, secluded padded cells, a Mail on Sunday investigation has found.

Devastated families are having children and young adults taken from them against their wishes and locked away – in one case for an astonishing 18 years.

Our shocking investigation found that confused teenagers are being fed through hatches in seclusion, forcibly injected with powerful drug cocktails to sedate them, and violently restrained by up to six adults at a time behind the locked doors of secretive units.

The scandal is due to broken political promises by the Government, bickering local officials, woeful care failures and profit-hungry private operators taking over a lucrative National Health Service sector. We can reveal

Ministers have failed to meet pledges made after the 2011 Winterbourne View care abuse scandal to empty assessment and treatment units (ATUs) of people with learning disabilities by returning them to families and communities;

Latest figures show that 2,375 people with learning disabilities are still stuck in these supposedly short-stay units;

One man has been held an astonishing 18 years. His elderly parents say the experience has been a nightmare and that their son is very depressed, crying when their weekly visits end;

The number of children in ATUs doubled over the past three years – yet powerless parents are routinely gagged by courts and some have been threatened with having homes seized if they speak out;

Tony Hickmott is an autistic man whose mother Pam said ‘never harmed anyone in the community’ when living at home in Brighton.

He was sent away supposedly for nine months, but has now, shamefully, spent almost 18 years in ATUs.

‘We were happy to care for him but just needed a little respite help,’ said Pam, 74, a retired hospital supervisor.

‘Instead, they took him away.’

She and her husband Roy had to fight in court to remain his legal guardians.

They say he has been stuck in lonely seclusion, abused, restrained and had his arm badly broken in three places.

Although Tony is now 41 years old, he has to ask staff even to turn on his television. Yet despite their advancing years, his parents visit him every week in, all weathers, a 240-mile round trip from Brighton to Canterbury.

‘Our beloved son has lived half his life in an institution which has been heartless and cold,’ said his mother.

‘His right to a decent quality of life was taken away from him and so was his family. This has destroyed our lives also. We are very bitter. Yet he has done nothing wrong.’

Families complain of regular abuse, bullying, cruelty, over-use of physical restraint, poorly-trained staff and use of powerful drug ‘coshes’ to sedate people;

The NHS spends up to £13,000 a week per person kept in ATUs – but experts say most should not be in secure hospitals and that supported outside living would be better and cheaper;

US hedge funds have muscled in on a sector worth almost half a billion pounds annually – while one charity operator gave its departed chief executive a pay package worth almost £1 million over two years.

Another woman with autism held for more than three years in an ATU said she was even stripped of her clothes and watched by male and female staff.

‘I felt so degraded and violated,’ she said.

Isabelle Garnett, an autism campaigner whose teenage son suffered terribly when taken into an ATU for almost two years, said people with autism and learning disabilities were placed in mental health hospitals due to lack of appropriate services in local communities.

‘Once they are admitted to hospital, people with autism are set up to fail,’ she said.


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kraftiekortie
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28 Oct 2018, 7:37 am

Obviously, this cannot continue.

The Mail is kind of like our National Enquirer, as far as I know. I wish one of the more “mainstream” papers would have done this expose.

I wonder what the ministry for disabilities or whatever has to say about this.



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28 Oct 2018, 9:28 am

kraftiekortie wrote:
Obviously, this cannot continue.

The Mail is kind of like our National Enquirer, as far as I know. I wish one of the more “mainstream” papers would have done this expose.

I wonder what the ministry for disabilities or whatever has to say about this.

The Daily Mail is a sensationalist tabloid. I was reluctant to post this because of that but I felt if this is true, the information is too important to censor. Bad people are sent to jail based on information provided by bad people, unreliable people, and people with personal agendas all the time. If this was not the case most people who do bad things would not be held to account. If this is not true or highly exaggerated it is egg on my face but a good thing.

This is the type of thing Geraldo Rivera exposed and hopefully largely ended in the states decades ago. If this is happening that it is happing in the place that produced Lorna Wing and Tony Attwood is particularly shocking.


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28 Oct 2018, 10:28 am

The last thing any country needs is to import the US' ass-backwards medical systems, particularly in the area of mental health.



kraftiekortie
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28 Oct 2018, 12:26 pm

Yep. Geraldo Rivera and Willowbrook. Remember it well! 1972.

You’re right, whatever the source, I hope the expose puts a stop to this sort of thing.

I actually know an ex-resident of Willowbrook.



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28 Oct 2018, 1:50 pm

These cases certainly do happen; I have spoken directly to some parents and carers for autistic people in this position on local UK autism forums, and there have been several high-profile cases (like the Winterbourne View scandal mentioned in the article) which have received more widespread reporting here.

There was a Parliamentary debate about autism only a short while ago (full transcript here) - which only 25 Members of Parliament could be bothered to attend. In respect of deprivation of liberty in mental health facilities, MP Helen Hayes had this to say regarding the case of one of her constituents and the wider issues...

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Psychiatric intensive care units are for short-term assessment; they are designed to diagnose a patient and to determine the treatment and support they need, and then to make an onward referral within six to eight weeks. Matthew’s doctors quickly identified that the most appropriate place for him was a unit at St Andrew’s, Northampton. St Andrew’s accepted the referral, but to Isabelle and Robin’s great distress, Matthew remained in Woking for a further six months, moving to Northampton only after a persistent campaign by his family, and after I had repeatedly raised the case in Parliament and with the Minister.

I am grateful to the Minister for meeting me and Matthew’s family, for recognising the extent of their suffering and the many serious issues with Matthew’s care, and for initiating a review of his case. I look forward to seeing the results of the review and to discussing it with the Minister.​

One of the most troubling aspects of Matthew Garnett’s situation was the absolute absence of autism awareness or specialism from the care he received while he was in Woking for six months. There was no recognition of his need for routine and structure, of the impact of his diet on his condition or of the detrimental impact of too much screen time on his mood and level of anxiety. As a consequence, his physical and mental condition deteriorated while he was in Woking. He gained weight, became more withdrawn and broke his wrist; his social skills and reading ability regressed; and he became more anxious and frightened.

Matthew’s parents launched a brave campaign to get him the treatment he needed. In doing so, they engaged with many other parents of children with autism and mental health needs. Working with the National Autistic Society, they launched a questionnaire for parents of children with autism and mental health needs. Within a few days, more than 800 parents had filled out the questionnaire, and the results are very troubling. Almost half the respondents said that, prior to their child being admitted to hospital, they had received no support in the community for autism or mental health needs. Some 85% of those whose child had been admitted to hospital said they had received no autism-specific support. Almost half said they did not feel consulted about, or involved in, decisions about their child’s care when they were in hospital. Finally, 61% said that, after their child was discharged, no arrangements at all were made for suitable support back in the community.


kraftiekortie wrote:
I wonder what the ministry for disabilities or whatever has to say about this.

Our Minister for Disabled People is only a junior minister, and part of the Department for Work and Pensions rather than the health department; she didn't bother to show up for the above debate. The Minister for Community and Social Care, Alistair Burt was present, and his response is at the end of the transcript linked above; he mentioned deprivation of liberty only in a passing comment about the specific case above, and most of the rest of his response is either vague wishes to "look into" things, deflection of responsibility to executive arms of the health service, and how fantastic he thinks the work of struggling NGOs is.

The Government has declared its intent to see autistic people cared for in the community (only following the negative publicity of various scandals, of course), but at the same time the local authorities deemed responsible for implementing this are being starved of funding, so they have no chance of doing it successfully. The Government then points the finger at struggling local authorities, despite the fact that withdrawal of central government funding is the primary cause of recent swingeing cuts in local social services. Meanwhile, mental health care is the responsibility of the health service, and there is hardly any coordination between this and local authority care; quite the opposite, they often pass the buck back and forth in the hope that each can get the other to be the one who provides care.

In the absence of community social care, autistic people often end up in mental health facilities when crises happen, and their melt-down behaviours are often seen as signs of psychotic aggression, leading to detention under the Mental Health Act ("sectioning"). The care they subsequently receive is mostly inappropriate to their autism, so they can end up detained indefinitely as they are not seen to be "improving". Others, with less extreme behaviour but high support needs, end up in other institutional care because cost-cutting private providers are the cheapest option, and there are too few resources to house them, provide care visits, etc. to meet their needs in the community. Others are deemed best cared for by their families, but the families receive too little support to cope with it. A common problem is that local social care departments cater only for people with learning disabilities, and do not recognise the needs of those autistic people who have minimal intellectual impairments (this is technically unlawful under the Autism Act 2009, but the buck is easy to pass to other services.)

Most private providers have little idea how to deal with autistic people, and can treat Deprivation of Liberty decisions, intended to protect the human rights of people who need close supervision or restricted freedom of movement due to their conditions, as a license to treat people like prisoners. Local authorities can effectively rubber-stamp these Deprivation of Liberty decisions for private care organisations with no oversight. The subjects of these orders can appeal against them through the Court of Protection, but unless they have particularly strong-willed support, often find this too difficult to attempt.


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xDominiel
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28 Oct 2018, 1:58 pm

Ugh. With all the progress we've made I hoped this would be a thing of the past.
If the circumstances were slightly different that could've been any of us in there.
I really hope this is sorted out and the ones responsible held very accountable.



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28 Oct 2018, 3:29 pm

I've seen this first hand; autistic inpatients are fed on £2 a day, shouted at, abused, mocked and kept in noisy, unclean hospital wards with unruly schizophrenic and psychopathic patients. Nurses are rude, badly dressed and can barely speak English - most of them are African immigrants on minimum wage. Meanwhile, private care company CEOs rake in seven figure bonuses. MPs have to do something aout this. After the Winterbourne scandal several yers ago when this business was fist exposed, it was promised there would be change. Things have only gotten worse.



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28 Oct 2018, 3:45 pm

I actually know a man who was incarcerated on one of the autistic wards at St Andrews in Northampton - the main source of this scandal. He's a completely normal guy whose AS is almost completely unnoticeable. He was arrested for assault about ten years ago and, if he'd have gone to prison would probably have got six months; a doctor diagnosed him with autism and he was sent to a medium secure unit in Northampton, after which he was locked up for about seven years.

Apparently, in this unit at the Northampton hospital, moderately troublesome patients (all diagnosed with ASD) would be locked up for months at a time in solitary confinement, where they'd only be allowed to eat "finger food", their only furniture would be a hard bed coated in fireproof plastic and they'd be denied TV, radio, newspapers - and pretty much everything else. They'd be watched through a perspex window literally twenty-four hours a day, often by staff of the opposite sex.



They were locked into a small dining room for every meal and weren't permitted to leave until everybody had finished his meal. They were only allowed up to the hatch when called, and if anybody broke this rule he ran the risk of being violently restrained and forced into "seclusion" (solitary confinement). Hot drinks were not allowed at any time other than mealtimes. The food was god-awful and the laundry powder was literally so cheap as to destroy one's clothes.



Patients were all talked down to and treated as though they were mentally disabled (very few, if any of them, from what he described were). Patients had to attend therapeutic sessions and if they refused were locked out of their bedrooms all day between the hours of nine and five and forced to spend that time in a communal area with violent, career criminal patients playing loud, flashing rap music videos on television all day.


Secluded patients could go weeks without being allowed out of doors, and even well behaved patients were very rarely allowed outside of the hospital grounds
for more than an hour or two a week.


He's since been released, and I'm tremendously glad about it, but there must be many more like him.



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28 Oct 2018, 3:56 pm

^ I've been following the case too, partly because I'm originally from Northants (I moved away thirty-odd years ago but still have family there). The chances of much improvement look poor given that Northants County Council effectively declared itself bankrupt earlier this year <link> (the first local authority to do so for decades.) Ironically, it is an all-Tory local authority which has followed government funding directives to the letter; including every possible opportunity to out-source local authority care or turn services into profit making institutions, of course.


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28 Oct 2018, 4:36 pm

Just like in the US, I would seek, for my child, the least possible exposure to the “system” as possible.

Once one gets in the “system,” it sucks you in in many ways. It’s like spinning in a whirlpool. Unless you are really strong, and can find a strong advocate for you, you are usually sucked in for life.

The effects are mostly detrimental.

The key to living a pleasant life with autism is seeking the least contact with the “system” as possible.

There are many fine and decent people who are part of the “system.” Mostly, they are sucked in, too.



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28 Oct 2018, 7:28 pm

Always like to imagine that the world could move passed locking away people with disabilities but that's a dream


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28 Oct 2018, 8:51 pm

I found a highly interesting thing on the internet (will search for it again). Someone had tracked down a retired mental nurse from Yorkshire and asked for any interesting stories.

One story was about the epileptic people at Menston (I think) who used to sing a parody of the song Sugartime, which went "Buggered in the morning, buggered in the evening, buggered at supper time" - they were locked in a cage all day so that if they fell, they did not fall far.

The song dates the story to 1958 at the earliest I think. So as recently as 60 years ago it was seen as ok to cage perfectly sane people who had brain disorders. Younger people will think that 60 years ago is ancient history, it isn't.



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28 Oct 2018, 8:54 pm

"did not fall far" - by this I meant far away, my impression was that the story was about a caged section of a ward.



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04 Nov 2018, 2:01 am

Scandal of ‘barbaric’ safe hospitals: At the least 40 folks below 35 have died whereas being handled

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At least 40 people with profound learning disabilities or autism have died in ‘barbaric’ secure hospitals.

Nine were under 35 when they passed away at the controversial treatment centres, which the Government has been vowing to close since 2015.

‘There are deaths of people in these institutions, some of them unexplained,’ said Sir Stephen Bubb, who has authored progress reports on secure hospitals.

‘The idea that in the 21st century you lock people up, you restrain them, you hold them down, I think is disgusting, it is barbaric and it is unacceptable, and it needs to be made unlawful.’

Secure hospitals treat some of the most vulnerable people in society who are deemed to be a danger to themselves due to mental health problems.

They are intended to treat patients for a maximum of just 18 months, by which time people should theoretically be stable enough to go into community-based care.

But most stay an average of five-and-a-half years, with 16 per cent staying more than 12 months and 60 per cent over two years, a Sky News investigation revealed.

More than 2,000 patients are currently being treated at a secure hospital, the investigation found.

Numbers have not changed much in the past five years, with 2,395 patients in March 2015 and just 80 less at 2,315 last month.

The investigation also found patients had to be restrained a total of 16,660 times in 2016, which rose to 28,880 last year.

A Freedom of Information request revealed staff resort to medication, patient seclusion and even ‘prone restraint’.

This involves pinning a patient to a surface they cannot move from, and can cause compression of the chest and airways.

NHS England put the increase in restraint cases down to better reporting of incidents.

his comes after Mr Hancock pledged a crackdown on violent patients and relatives amid a surge in attacks on NHS staff.

A shocking 15 per cent of employees – one in seven – have been attacked or threatened in the past 12 months, the highest rate in five years.

Mr Hancock will today roll out the health service’s first violence reduction strategy to protect vulnerable staff.


Health Secretary orders probe into autistic youngsters locked in NHS 'hell holes' across the UK... as mother reveals her son is 'so drugged he can hardly move' in care unit
Quote:
ealth Secretary Matt Hancock has ordered an urgent investigation into why youngsters are being locked up like criminals because they have autism or learning difficulties, just days after The Mail on Sunday revealed their appalling plight.

Mr Hancock was ‘deeply shocked’ by this newspaper’s account last week of children as young as 13 being incarcerated, sometimes for years, in NHS-funded assessment and treatment units, known as ATUs.

Last night, Mr Hancock stepped in and ordered the Care Quality Commission to launch an in-depth review of the use of hugely expensive ATUs, where places cost taxpayers up to £13,000 a week.

The units are meant to be for short-term use only – but some people have been held for 18 years.

Mr Hancock said swift action was needed to stamp out bad practices.

In a letter to the CQC, Mr Hancock said he had ‘become increasingly concerned about the use of seclusion settings for those with autism and learning disabilities’.

He continued: ‘We are requesting that you immediately initiate a Care Quality Commission thematic review into the practice of prolonged seclusion and long-term segregation for children and adults with a mental illness, learning disability or autism in secondary care and social care settings. I request this review be expedited and completed as quickly as is feasible.’

He added: ‘I look forward to seeing the findings of this work to ensure that we can eliminate inappropriate restrictive practices and ensure that vulnerable people supported by health and social care are accorded the best possible care.’

Mr Hancock’s intervention will be greeted with scepticism by campaigners who argue that similar promises have been made by consecutive Health Secretaries – but nothing has changed.

Meanwhile, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is ‘actively considering’ taking action, while a growing chorus of voices, including the Children’s Commissioner and leading MPs, are also calling for investigations.

Amid their concern, a devastating Government-commissioned report is to be published tomorrow that will report that people with learning difficulties die nearly 20 years sooner than the general population.

The report, by University College London’s Institute for Health Equity, concludes: ‘As a society, we are not supporting this vulnerable group as well as we should.’

He said the EHRC was ‘actively considering’ which of its formal enforcement powers could be used to ‘fix the current system’. These could include a major inquiry into human rights concerns or even an investigation into institutional prejudice and unlawful discrimination, similar to the landmark probe it carried out into victimisation of Metropolitan Police staff, published two years ago.

The Children’s Commissioner for England, Anne Longfield, who has statutory responsibility for children in care, has also stepped in. She has written to NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens asking him to launch his own review.

Yet concerns about ATUs were raised at the highest levels of the NHS six years ago. This newspaper has obtained a letter sent to local authorities in June 2012 by Sir David Nicholson, the then NHS chief executive, and Sir David Behan, director-general of social care, admitting ‘this model of care has no place in the 21st Century’.

Official figures show more than 2,500 people with autism and learning disabilities were held in ATUs last year, including 230 children. The number of under-18s detained in ATUs has more than doubled in just three years.

The NHS spent £477.4 million on ATUs for people with autism and learning disabilities in 2016, with families saying places cost up to £13,000 a week

UCL’s report found that those with learning difficulties account for a quarter of young people in custody – even though they make up just 2.9 per cent of the total population.

Whenever Lee Mead is visited by her mother Gillian, she repeats the same phrase: ‘I want to come home. I want to come home.’

Lee went into The Priory unit in Pontypridd, South Wales – 80 miles from home in Wiltshire – last year and in April was sectioned for the first time in her life. Gillian says she is now frequently restrained, and that she is no longer allowed into her daughter’s room. She said: ‘There’s one medication they haven’t got and have never, ever had – and that’s tender loving care.’ Gillian has launched an internet petition hoping to secure Lee’s release.


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21 Jan 2019, 2:34 am

Mental health scandal: My seven year battle to free my autistic son

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Leo Andrade handed a petition signed by 50,000 supporters to Downing Street in a bid to free 24-year-old Stephen. He was kept in four different units and sometimes held in isolation and injected with powerful antipsychotic drugs. Mrs Andrade, a mother-of-three, had been preparing to spend another Christmas without Stephen when he was released with little warning last month.

Mrs Andrade, 54, from Islington, north London, plans to discuss the prospect of legal action against the NHS for false imprisonment and a breach of human rights with her lawyers.

She said: "He has been brutalised, punished and given antipsychotic drugs for years and it is clear that he is suffering from post-traumatic shock disorder."

While one mother's prayers have been answered, hundreds of parents are still suffering the loss of children locked away, often hundreds of miles from home.

Last week former Lib Dem health minister Norman Lamb wrote to Health Secretary Matt Hancock to demand urgent action. The call comes after NHS digital figures revealed that 2,065 adults and 260 children with learning difficulties and autism are locked up.


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“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman