CQC report into Calderstones NHS Trust highlights 'sickening' record

England’s care regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), has revealed the extent of failures recorded at Calderstones NHS Trust, which includes a number of abusive practices that adults with learning disabilities have been subject to.

The report found numerous failures in reference to the Mental Health Act, while also confirming the use of seclusion and physical restraint, including face down restraint, as well as inadequate staffing. Wards designed for the care of adults were found to be dirty and unsafe, in a facility where 40 per cent of patients have been detained for more than five years.

Mencap response

Mencap chief executive, Jan Tregelles, has responded to the report: “The CQC findings paint a sickening picture of what is happening inside a hospital trust providing care for people with a learning disability. They have found serious deficiencies in the quality of care, including dirty and unsafe wards and seclusion rooms, inadequate staffing, frequent use of physical restraint and seclusion, including face down restraint, and failures in relation to the Mental Health Act. It also reveals that 40 per cent of patients at Calderstones have been there for five years or more, mostly detained under the Mental Health Act.

“This shows the urgent need to end the unacceptable culture of sending people away to inpatient units such as those run by Calderstones. These are not places where families would ever want to send their loved ones but we know that there are over 3,000 people in these units and more people are going in than moving out. These are places often hundreds of miles away from their homes, where people are at significant risk of abuse and neglect.

“This report comes in the wake of silence from NHS England, the Government and local authorities, on how they plan to enact the recommendations of the Bubb Report that was published last month. It has been three and half years since Winterbourne View, and over six months since the government failed to meet their own deadline for moving people out of in-patient units. The failings of Calderstone’s NHS Trust shows that urgent action is needed to move people out of in-patient settings and return them to their local communities or we risk continually and grossly failing some of the most vulnerable people in our society. We are all collectively responsible for addressing this failure.”

Family reaction

The safeguarding investigation was set up after a whistleblower reported on institutional abuse suffered by a 22-year-old adult with autism and a learning disability, named as Chris, who remains at the Trust despite accounts that included being kicked, hit in the chest, spat at and having sanitiser sprayed into his eyes.

Chris’s mother, Lynne McCarrick, has commented on the findings, saying: “I am not surprised that the CQC found failings at Calderstones NHS Trust. This is not a place that I want my son. Chris was sent to a hospital run by Calderstones NHS Trust as the local authority and the NHS said there was nowhere else for him to go.

“My beautiful son has many amazing attributes. He is funny, lively and has great potential yet there he is, isolated in a flat in a hospital with only paid carers around him. He has been denied education and has no peers. He has no life, he simply exists and yet his service is bewilderingly expensive. My son continues to languish in what is effectively a ‘holding bay’. We have even been prevented from seeing him. Chris has no voice so we make our concerns known but we are ignored and shut out. I want him to be near his home and family, so we can make sure he is safe and is given the opportunity to live a life.”

Challenging Behaviour Foundation

Vivien Cooper, chief executive of The Challenging Behaviour Foundation, commented: “Immediate action must be taken now to ensure that people with learning disabilities within Calderstones are safe and receiving good care and support. It is also vital that assessment and treatment units that the Government describe as the wrong model of care are not used for long term placements. All people with a learning disability should have access to good support in their local community. The report published today lists a number of serious failings that pose a risk to individuals. We know from the Learning Disability Census that people in inpatient services are at much higher risk of abuse, self-harm, being excessively restrained and over medicated. We talk to families everyday who face this difficult and distressing reality. This simply is not acceptable in Britain today.

“Today’s report highlights serious and significant concerns that must be addressed urgently. It is disgraceful that families continue to fight to have their concerns heard and secure the support their relatives need – when time after time independent evidence shows these services are failing the very people they are supposed to care for.”