There have been two important contributions recently which have highlighted the dangers of assuming that “supported living” should and must replace all other forms of care for adults with learning difficulties. In particular, both items support the notion that people with learning difficulties and their relatives and supporters should be given a real choice of places and ways of living not restricted by prejudice against “rural” or “institutional” lifestyles to a flat or small house in a town. For some people Camphill communities offer a truly supported life.
The Centre for Welfare Reform has published a paper by Alain Catzeflis (father of a Camphill resident with “autism and learning difficulties severe enough to require support in most things she does”). Called “ The Long Shadow of Winterbourne”, the paper discusses how the past scandals of appalling treatment of people with learning disabilities in so called Assessment and Treatment Units has now created an atmosphere of prejudice and ignorance about all facilities which are not small flats and houses in towns or cities. Alain highlights the widespread confusion between mental health and learning disabilities leading to the assumption that people with learning disabilities need to be “treated” as if they were mentally ill. But the race to supported living has shown the dangers of the pendulum swinging towards isolation and prescriptive solutions with the CQC itself (who are meant to be the guardians of people’s rights) having “fallen into the very trap that their own guidance warns against: “We do not wish to be overly prescriptive and it is not our intention to create a ‘one size fits all’ approach”” in the words of tribunal judge Ian Robertson.
Read Alain Catzeflis’ full paper The Long Shadow of Winterbourne here.
At the same time, a disturbing and well-researched programme on supported living was released by the BBC’s File on 4. It is well worth listening to the whole 35 minutes as it is detailed and covers a wide variety of problems stemming from the fact that “People’s relatives have been encouraged to believe that life is inevitably better if you are in “independent living”.
- One case where the local government ombudsman describes “a catalogue of failures” and the care provider subsequently admitting that “this person’s needs were not suited to a supported living environment”
- A care provider openly stating that some local authorities offer a rate which makes it impossible to adequately train and recruit staff
- The relationship between care providers, landlords and housing associations sometimes effectively removing from tenants the choice of a care provider.
The President of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services states on the programme that “people deserve an ordinary life and that means housing options that you and I might consider”. And Jane Knight, co-author of the REACH standards for supported living, is adamant that people with learning disabilities should have “good support in a place where they have chosen to live”. Yet the programme concludes that financial pressure on local authorities and the scramble to replace institutional care with supported living has led, in some cases, to merely moving “some of the worst elements of institutional care” from large institutions to flats and houses.
You can listen to the 35 minute BBC programme on supported living here.
