Charities have warned commitments by councils and the NHS to get people with learning disabilities out of institutional care will not go far enough.
Mencap and The Challenging Behaviour Foundation (CBF) said plans to overhaul services for people with learning disabilities outlined by groups including the Local Government Association (LGA), the Association of Adult Social Services (ADASS) and NHS England would ‘disappoint thousands of people’.
The Transforming Care for People with Learning Disabilities – Next Steps report marks the latest response to the scandal at the private Winterbourne View care home, where undercover BBC reporting uncovered abuse.
Council and health leaders have pledged to substantially reduce the number of people with learning difficulties placed in hospital and time spent admitted by ensuring high quality community-based alternatives are in place.
Commitments were also made to tighten regulation and inspection of care providers and address skill gaps in staff.
A 2014 report from Sir Stephen Bubb in response to Winterbourne View called for closure of units that provide inappropriate care and development of local and support services.
Yet charities said more people with learning difficulties were still going into care units than coming out, while many had been there for years. Calls were raised for a ‘systematic change to commissioning practices across health and social care and joint working to create local services to both prevent in-patient admissions and enable people to return to their communities’.
Chief executive at Mencap, Jan Tregelles, and chief executive at CBF, Viv Cooper, said: ‘There needs to be a clear, timetabled nationwide closure programme and investment in and development of local services, so thousands of people can be brought out of inappropriate settings and returned to their local community with good support.’
Cllr Izzi Seccombe, chairman of the LGA’s community wellbeing board, said the ‘firm commitment to joined up working means we are now able to accelerate at pace to ensure anyone with a learning disability, autism, a mental health problem or behaviour that challenges is offered safe, high quality local care’.
David Pearson, president of ADASS, said while ‘there is still to do to make sure that more people with disabilities who need high level of health and social care support are able to live in their own homes or other settings with support’, the report showed organisations were ‘determined to ensure that progress is made’.
