Back to Bedlam? Key Report on Learning Disability
Type: News | ResearchTopic: Care regulation | Disability rights | Policy and legislation
Published on: 22nd August 2017
The Centre for Welfare Reform has published a damning report on the state of learning disability practice and policy in England. It is very much worth reading from a Scottish perspective too. The author of the report, Robin Jackson, sets out to show that:
- Successive governments in the UK have ignored people with a learning disability because this population is perceived to be too small and insignificant to warrant government interest and action
- Their treatment by governments has been unnecessarily cruel and characterised by administrative maladroitness and political ineptitude
- Governments have either ignored or violated the rights of people with a learning disability
Jackson points to the following dangerous developments:
- The growing number of care home closures and local authority cuts in social care provision
- The declining influence of the major disability charities and the negative consequences for people with a learning disability
- The ”˜success’ of central governments in muzzling the voice of the larger national charities and ”˜independent’ advocacy programmes
- Increasing centralised control in the field of research
- The negative impact of some forms of technology on the provision of services for people with a learning disability
- Escalating levels of prejudice and discrimination involving people with a learning disability
- Successive governments’ practice of outsourcing social care provision for people with a disability
Jackson ends by posing the question ”“ are we witnessing the return of institutionalization of people with a learning disability?