It’s time for a radical strategy to end the detention of over 3,000 people in institutions

Campaign for a Fair Society calls for a radical strategy to end, once and for all, the scandalous detention and placement of over 3,000 people with learning disabilities and/or autism in institutions for long term care away from their homes.

 

In the wake of Winterbourne View, voluntary and gradual reform of the assessment and treatment system has been an abject failure and there are more people in this fundamentally abusive system now than a year ago.

 

The campaign calls on political leadership, and all those with a role to play in planning, commissioning, providing and regulating care, to ensure that assessment and treatment is provided close to home. De-commissioning of out-of-area placements should be combined with a strategy of building local provider capacity for community solutions and strengthening local support.

 

Respect for people’s human rights to liberty under the EU Convention on Human Rights, Article 5 should be paramount and all decisions about care must comply with the requirement for the ‘least restrictive option’ under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards.

 

Decisions about care must involve families and/or advocates.

 

Providers who serially detain people with learning disabilities and/or autism rather than successfully assess and treat them towards resettlement should be de-registered.

 

Campaign for a Fair Society believes that “…human rights are for everyone, including the most disabled members of our community, and those rights include the same right to liberty as everyone else” (Hale 2014).  People should only ever be detained or deprived of their liberty unavoidably and temporarily under the correct legal safeguards with the outcome of living a safe and fulfilling life in the community always in view. Anything less is inhumane and intolerable in a fair society.