![]() Bubb’s recommendation simply weaves further layers of unnecessary bureaucratic complexity and costly pointlessness into an already unworkable fabric. Reforms pledged by NHS England shouldn’t need a bespoke commissioner to ensure their delivery. But we don’t need additional (human) rights. His final report calls for a commissioner with a statutory duty to promote, enhance and protect the rights of people with learning disabilities and their families in England. And a continuing and baffling insistence on Winterbourne View as the cultural touchstone of inhumane practice in early 21st-century Britain (ironically) allowing more recent atrocities, including the deaths of Connor, Stephanie Bincliffe, Thomas Rawnsley, Nico Reed, Richard Handley and so many others, to be silenced. It’s the continuing lack of recognition of learning disabled people as fully human. The numbers incarcerated remained constant, Norman Lamb, the then care minister, reluctantly talked of “abject failure” and the baton was passed to Bubb.īut he isn’t the problem. The promise that the 3,500 or so people in units across the country would be allowed to lead lives worthy of the name failed to materialise. Meanwhile the government’s Winterbourne joint improvement programme fell apart, despite a concordat signed by 48 organisations numerous meetings endless talk initial fake cheeriness and a hefty budget. A chilling disregard for certain people, in life and in death. The review into deaths commissioned by Nicholson was eventually published before Christmas and reveals figures far worse than we imagined. We’ve collectively produced a private member’s bill, a short film, two animations,a short play, a Justice quilt, a Justice flag that has waved high at two Glastonbury festivals and been snapped with the New Zealand disability rights commissioner in Auckland. The #JusticeforLB campaign emerged became, and remains, a diverse collective of people, with no budget, staff or hierarchy, no rules or formal structure, just commitment, love and dedication. Drawing the dots between the Cipold findings and the response to Connor’s death, we persuaded David Nicholson, the then chief executive of NHS England, to commission a review into how other unexpected deaths in Southern Health were investigated. In an almost numb space of horror and disbelief we wanted accountability and change. A senselessness compounded by the trust board minutes immediately reporting that Connor died from natural causes. ![]() ![]() I can’t explain what it’s like to have your child die a preventable death in NHS care. ![]() He was left to take a bath unsupervised despite clear evidence of increasing seizure activity. In July 2013, Connor drowned in the unit. He’d become uncharacteristically anxious and unpredictable. At about the same time, Connor was admitted into a short-term local assessment and treatment unit (ATU) run by Southern Health NHS foundation trust. In March 2013, the Confidential Inquiry into Premature Deaths of Learning Disabled People (Cipold) found that learning disabled people die on average 20 years earlier than the general population. He was refreshingly funny and unassuming (and diagnosed with autism and epilepsy). Back in 2011, when Panorama exposed shocking abuse to patients with learning disabilities at Winterbourne View, our son, Connor (or Laughing Boy) was just 16, loving school, life and buses. ![]()
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