Why not the same outrage at the NAS care home abuse story as at Oxfam?

[sickofsocalledexperts]

Just that really. There was terrible abuse of vulnerable autistic and learning disabled adults at the National Autistic Society's Mendip House in Somerset. They were ridden round like horses, fed chillies, slapped and thrown in the swimming pool - all "for a laugh" and by NAS staff in a residential home that they had themselves accredited. The NAS first tried to "bury the bad news' by unveiling it via a new Twitter account with only 21 followers last Friday (marking a new low in PR strategies). And then, when that strategy backfired in spectacular fashion with a huge online backlash, they earnestly promised to be totally transparent and produce a full timeline about who knew what when . This, almost amazingly , they also tried to sneak out on Wednesday with little fanfare and using the same link (it's still up on Facebook, so if you weren't looking, you wouldn't know a new statement has been issued). Jeez, who's doing their PR?

Now sh*t happens, and bad apples turn up in institutions, but it's how quickly and how transparently you deal with them that says whether your organisation prioritises a) making damn sure this kind of abuse never happens again by shining a bright light on what went wrong or b) covering their arses.

As mum to a boy who is autistic and learning disabled, and could never tell me if someone was being nasty to him behind closed doors, I"m appalled not just by what happened at Mendip House but also how they've handled it. It's both dumb and cynical.

Also think the new statement contradicts their earlier PR positioning - that action was immediate once head office were informed of the abuse, but that sadly there were two years before that when "local management" didn't report the abuse upwards. The new timeline is playing some very silly games with wording, which gives me even less confidence that this is in fact true.

Were these poor people left at the mercy of abusive practice for 2 years because the NAS is basically a shower of shi*e?

Two things are for sure: 1) they've damaged their brand even more with this sneaky PR strategy and 2) my beloved boy will set not one foot over the door of an NAS-run school or home.

www.facebook.com/NationalAutisticSociety/

I’ve sent it to my manager so it can be shared across my organisation (county wide).

And shared on FB of course

In my opinion the NAS is primarily interested in furthering the charity. The autism is second (third, fourth?) to the high profile charity.

The charity and sensory rooms. They do love sensory rooms.

The NAS should be making sure this story gets full coverage. they should be less concerned with themselves as a brand and use it as an opportunity for society to talk about and try to deal with this sort of abuse.

It gets ignored because it's uncomfortable to think that humans can abuse those who they are meant to be caring for. They shouldn't be trying to hide this sort of abuse away and by doing so, are they saying that that's the best they can offer?

And these worthless fuckers who were disciplined and fired, where are they? Are they properly monitored to make sure they never, ever again have the opportunity to hurt vulnerable people again?

Some people have suggested CCTV but I don’t suppose it can be trained on every nook and cranny. It’s proper checks and balances and reporting structures, so a group of abusive cunts like this can’t lord it over a place. In fact, to be honest, the Mendip House story should form a case study in ‘what not to do when running a home for vulnerable disabled adults’

I read about it last week and posted about it on FB at the time. Horrifying, and actually when I commented about the Oxfam story I said at the time that this was the second awful charity story out that week after the NAS one and that it just emphasised my belief that national corporate charities need to be abolished as they are all about money and politics first and their cause second.

I’m definitely going to be raising it at my next safeguarding training

How do we stop it happening again?

Proper pay and training structures for care workers and respect for it as a profession rather than just somewhere for people to hide out on a easy ride rather that getting their hands dirty doing other minimum wages jobs or being sanctioned on benefits.

A legal requirement for proper professional supervision for people working in care environments. Might not stop the twats being twats but might give potential whistleblowers the knowledge/confidence to challenge poor practice.

More funding for local NHS services for people with Autism and LD so that specialist services can be provided in a persons local area/own homes rather than them having to be shipped off miles away from family and friends in order to receive 'specialist services'

More funding for local authorities to provide specialist carers and services for people in their local area.

Hatgirl I really like your ideas. My little picture of how things will be once my husband and I are little old people, is that our (big adult) boy will still be living with us, but we can pay strong, fun young carers to take him places during the day, maybe swimming or even to do a little job in a local cafe ( he is now a whizz at emptying the dishwasher) or to a SN club or two. Then we get a break and he gets a life. It would cost way less than the £!50,000 the NAS was getting paid per person at the abusive home!

£150,000 is a guess, but an educated one

' Proper pay and training structures '

Piss off, my son's carers are barely above minimum wage and wouldn't dream of abusing my son or humiliating him like that. That's because they're good people. Same as all the other, good carers

This has happened because bad people do shitty, evil things and take pleasure out of making people feel small. Some of these bad people will take jobs of carers and the feeling of power they have in their shitty, little lives will become too much for them to cope.with and things will escalate.

All care homes should be monitored by cctv in all areas, undercover staff should be mandatory and the penalties for pulling stunts like this should be so high it at least makes the evil cunts think twice.

This is the safeguarding report if people want to read/share:

ssab.safeguardingsomerset.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/20180206_Mendip-House_SAR_FOR_PUBLICATION.pdf

That is horrendous. I hope the staff members responsible are bought to justice and forced to stand up in court. Those poor people, abused by those meant to be assisting them with dignity.

The NAS have a link to this below on their website front page. I’ve seen it elsewhere as well. It’s obviously dreadful, but I don’t think they have hidden it.

They have admitted to their mistakes.

www.autism.org.uk/get-involved/media-centre/position-statements/mendip-house.aspx

This was the top story on Points West one night last week. No idea why it didn't make the national news, though. NAS weren't 'available' to be interviewed so a local councillor took most of the flack. The inhabitants (can't think of the right word) had mostly been placed there from other LAs and there didn't seem to be sufficient monitoring by SSs of their home LAs. God knows what the CQC was doing?

This is all a bit close to home (literally) for me, as was Winterbourne View. I consider myself very lucky that DS2 is fairly high functioning. I have never had much time for the NAS, though. Never been particularly helpful to me.

Because the disabled are the lowest on the ladder.

I’m not sure I equate minimum wage with cruel shit.

Piss off, my son's carers are barely above minimum wage and wouldn't dream of abusing my son or humiliating him like that. That's because they're good people. Same as all the other, good carers

Sorry, I think I've not worded what I said very well. I come at this from the point of view of a safeguarding social worker who has been involved in investigating this kind of abuse over and over again.

It's nothing to do with being minimum wage and everything to do with people entirely unsuited to care work being forced into carework jobs by the benefits system, alongside people who have chosen to be there and do an excellent job. Thankfully even then the vast majority of people are decent people and don't abuse people, but all it takes in my experience is one or two strong characters who lack empathy and don't give a shit to completely change the nature of a caring environment, even if it was previously a good one.

My point was that it shouldn't be a minimum wage profession. The skills required to provide decent care are hugely underestimated. People shouldn't just be able to walk into it without really good supervision and training. The managers of those on the ground also need to be supported to do that supervision and training but often they aren't. It is the constant devaluing of care and underfunding of care services that reduces the opportunities for checks and balances that subsequently allows the bad people who do evil shitty things to get away with doing them.

They do now notevil, but as per my OP I have never seen an organisation pull out quite so many sneaky PR stunts to try not to get too much attention for this one. And think their statement is still parsing words rather than being fully transparent about who knew what, when

When you think of the coverage Winterbourne got - how has this not been top of BBC??

Oh God. This is awful. And utterly unsurprising.

To answer the original question, or give my three thoughts as to why:

The story did not affect anyone in the south east.

No-one is wanting to reduce expenditure on caring for those with autism, whereas UKIP, some newspapers and others want to reduce overseas aid (so a bad story about an overseas aid charity can be used to justify less aid).

No-one in the national media has friends who work there, many have friends who work for overseas aid charities.