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How low can you go? In response to the continuing, and continuing, and continuing, and continuing call for the closure of assessment and treatment units, many voices have quite reasonably pointed to the diversity and complexity of inpatient services that have been lumped under the label of ‘Assessment and Treatment Unit’, and have also suggested that some of the services under this label might actually be necessary for the health and safety of some people with learning disabilities (and the health of safety of their communities). This post tries to set out some of this diversity in inpatient services for people with learning disabilities (the complexity is added by the sources of information!), and to ask the question “How many people with learning disabilities ‘should’ be in specialist inpatient services”? What do we know about the number of people with learning disabilities in England in different types of specialist inpatient service? Although the information is typically confusing ...

Deja vu all over again Words fail me (short blogpost, huh?). Just a week after Bill Mumford resigned as lead for the Winterbourne View Joint Improvement Programme, the following blogpost began circulating ( http://bloggerbubb.blogspot.co.at/2014/07/the-winterbourne-view-concordat-and.html ). It’s by Sir Stephen Bubb, Chief Executive of ACEVO (the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations). It’s worth reading in full, but my take on a summary of the main points within it are as follows: 1) Simon Stevens, CEO of NHS England, asked Sir Bubb to come up with a plan to sort out the Winterbourne View debacle. 2) Sir Bubb invited an unknown number of voluntary sector organisations providing residential services to people with learning disabilities to breakfast. 3) On the basis of this breakfast, Mark Winter, Sir Bubb’s ‘multi-talented’ Head of Health Commissioning, wrote a Plan (as yet unseen by the wider world), which Simon Stevens has accepted. 4) Sir Bubb has been asked to ...

W(h)ither Winterbourne? I first heard the news of Bill Mumford’s resignation from the Winterbourne View Joint Improvement Programme ( http://www.macintyrecharity.org/news/details/?/Personal%20statement%20from%20Bill%20Mumford/2403/ ) in Birmingham New Street station – with police called into a second MacIntyre residential school concerning a ‘safeguarding incident’ brought to light by a whistleblower. Sinking feeling replaced by numbness for a while, then the brain starting to drift into ‘What next?’ thoughts as I got nearer to home. Then I was brought up short by this tweet from @sarasiobhan. I’m ashamed to say that this is exactly what I was doing, and I was quite rightly jolted into keeping my trap shut and letting a night’s sleep do its work. So why this blogpost, with this title? Well, I do have my views (as I’m sure everyone does) on what next, but I don’t want to talk about the tactics, the structure, the exact arrangement of the deckchairs – it’s not right, right now, to do tha...

Very Important People I wasn’t going to write a blogpost today to mark Day 107 of #107days. I’m quite reserved and expressions of emotion from me are likely to come out as quite strangulated and clumsily expressed. But I just wanted to quickly share something that happened this morning, quite coincidentally. It was my daughter’s VIP assembly morning. One of my favourite things about my kids’ primary school is their VIP system. Every week, one child in each class is drawn by lot to be the VIP for the week (so that every child is a VIP for one week in the school year). VIPs get a special red jumper and get to do exciting jobs like going to get the school register, but the lovely part is the VIP assembly. At some point in the week, without the VIP present, all the other children in their class discuss what is great about them. In the VIP assembly the VIPs get to hear (with family invited and usually dabbing away the occasional tear at the back of the hall) some of the things that the othe...