UK Abuse Scandal Highlights Need for Better Community Services for People with Disabilities

The BBC Panorama program "Undercover Care: The Abuse Exposed" revealed severe abuse of people with disabilities at a care home in Bristol, England. During five weeks of undercover investigation at the Winterbourne View facility, the reporter captured footage of some of the hospital’s most vulnerable patients being pinned down, slapped, dragged into showers, taunted, and teased.

Jim Mansell, emeritus Professor of Learning Disability at the Tizard Centre, University of Kent, and a member of the Open Society Mental Health Initiative Advisory Committee, wrote a commentary on the abuse in The Guardian newspaper. In his article "Bristol Care Home: A Failure On Every Level," Mansell states that the incident is not just a case of staff brutality and poor management. Instead, it is the outcome of a "wrong model of care—people with challenging behaviour being shunted off to these institutions because their local health and social services have not got their act together to provide the kind of support they need locally."

The full article is online at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/01/bristol-care-home-failure-every-level.