The health and social care regulator has been heavily criticised for only issuing a fixed penalty notice to a charity that ran a care home where autistic people were taunted, bullied and humiliated.
Barbara Keeley, the shadow minister for mental health and social care, has written to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to express deep concern that it fined the National Autistic Society (NAS) £4,000.
Keeley said families of autistic people were horrified the NAS had escaped with a fine rather than prosecution over serious failings at Mendip House in Somerset, and that she was planning to raise the matter with the government.
Workers at the home threw objects at residents and teased and swore at them, a report found last year. A whistleblower claimed one resident was slapped, forced to eat chillies and repeatedly thrown into a swimming pool.
In another incident highlighted in the report, a staff member is said to have put a ribbon around a resident’s neck and ridden him “like a horse”.
A review by the Somerset Safeguarding Adults Board (SSAB) said parallels had been drawn to the case of Winterbourne View, a private hospital near Bristol where people with severe learning difficulties were abused.
Mendip House was closed down and the residents, some of whom had lived there for many years, were found new placements. Staff were disciplined and the police investigated but no one was charged. Officers said there was insufficient evidence to do so andhanded the matter over to the CQC.
The Guardian revealed last week that the CQC had dealt with the NAS by way of a fixed penalty notice. This related to one aspect of the failings, that residents had been funding staff meals during outings.
Keeley said on Sunday: “People are very angry and disturbed about this. People with autistic children are horrified there has been no prosecution.” In her letter to the CQC she described it a “serious and high profile case” and said: “The National Autistic Society has an income of over £50m in relation to social care services. Your fine represents 0.1% of this income, equivalent to only one or two weeks’ fees for one of the individuals formerly resident in Mendip House.
“Given the scale of the problem encountered in Mendip House, many interested parties will feel that a fine of this size does not recognise the reality of the situation.”
Richard Humphries, a senior fellow for social care policy at the King’s Fund thinktank, tweeted: “Reducing abuse to the status of a parking ticket and we wonder why social care has an image problem.”
Another Twitter user called the decision a disgrace in exchange with the CQC:
Care Quality Commission
(@CareQualityComm)Hi there The police decided there was not enough evidence to prosecute in this case.
The CQC, however, also has the power to prosecute, as was later acknowledged by its interim chief executive, Debbie Westhead.
She said: “We also investigated whether we could prosecute the National Autistic Society for failing to keep people safe, but were not able to do so due to insufficient evidence. The descriptions of abuse at Mendip House are extremely distressing and the final decision not to proceed with the prosecution was a complex and difficult one.
“Separately, the police explored the possibility of criminal prosecutions against individuals but were also unable to proceed due to lack of corroborating evidence. The action that we were able to take was a fixed penalty notice against the provider for failing to protect people from financial abuse, resulting in a fine of £4000, which is the maximum amount allowed in law.”
Mark Lever, the NAS’s chief executive, has apologised for what happened at Mendip House. He said: “We took immediate action to make sure the people there were safe. We closed the service in November 2016 and have introduced important changes to ensure this does not happen again.”
